This is not Beirut
Video, 48 min.
Jayce Salloum ©1994
How could it happen that Beirut was transformed from the "Pearl of
the East" into "Hell on Sea"? Metres of bookshelves have been
written, kilometres of rubble filmed and still there is no
answer. For a long time, journalists have ceased to look for the
cause, but search instead for the most emotive name for the
Lebanese capital: "City Without Hope", "Open Wound", or, for the
deep thinkers "Lebanam". Jayce Salloum doesn't seem to be any
closer to the answer either, despite the thousands of film
fragments that he has collected in the past few years (200 hours
of material just for his "This is not Lebanon") about what you
could irrevently call "the Arabic question". Salloum's subject is
never the question itself, but the way principally the Western
media report it: the stereotypes that are used and the
simplifications which ultimately lead to falsifications. In "This
is not Beirut" he shows the preparation of the umpteenth
documentary about the inextricable conflict. The outline of the
warring factions looks like the metro system of a cosmopolitan
city - the metropolis that Beirut itself once was, judging by the
brightly coloured postcards that proudly praise the centuries old
ruins. The field of tension that Beirut now is, is powerfully
represented by two high tension cables which keep shorting
against each other. Salloum closses his personal video with the
number "Love letter straight from my heart". There, the sun sets
over what once was the Paris of the Middle East.
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