Karam Ghossein

Lebanon, July 2006. War is raging between Hezbollah and Israel. During a 24h ceasefire, Marwan heads out in search of his father who refused to leave his Southern village. As the ceasefire is quickly broken, Marwan finds himself under the rain of bombs and takes shelter in a house with a group of elders. Suddenly, a group of Israeli soldiers enter the first floor. Trapped in the house and hostages of their own fears, the next three days will see the situation spiral out of control.

A car with a loudspeaker on its roof is driving through southern Lebanon. The old man at the wheel is calling for people to join a demonstration to support their brothers and sisters who’ve occupied a tobacco company and are now being besieged by the army. His words come from the past, as he’s referring to events from 1973 – events that few remember today. Neither the protests made by the tobacco farmers from the south against the large landholders’ monopoly nor the strike for better working conditions by workers at a Beirut chocolate factory are anchored in the country’s collective memory. All recollection of this social movement was erased by the civil war and society has since been marked by deep sectarian divisions.

Marwa Arsanios’ video Falling Is Not Collapsing, Falling Is Extending is an investigation into the changing landscape of Beirut, the city where she lives and works. After the closure of a major municipal landfill site in 2015, thousands of tons of rubbish clogged the streets of Beirut. This led to public outcry, protests and accusations of government corruption. Since the 1990s, in the years following the end of the Lebanese Civil War, Beirut has been rapidly reshaped by property developers. Using strategically placed rubbish dumps, the surrounding land is devalued and left open for redevelopment. The aftermath of this process is the subject of the film, a portrait of a contested urban environment that connects the crisis with the city’s property boom.

A video that uses the history of a magazine – Cairo’s Al-Hilal ‘50s and ‘60s collection – as the starting point for an inquiry into Jamila Bouhired, the Algerian freedom fighter. An actress designated to play her role is showing the magazine’s covers to the camera. From the different representations of Jamila in cinema to her assimilation and promotion through the magazine, the performance attempts to look at the history of socialist projects in Egypt, anti-colonial wars in Algeria, and the way they have promoted and marginalized feminist projects. The clear gender division used to marginalize women from the public sphere was overcome for a short moment during the Algerian war of independence (Jamila becoming its icon). Different voices and film and print material are used to explore this history. What does it mean to play the role of the freedom fighter? What does it mean to become an icon?

On the outskirts of the city, right by the water, lies an arterial road that leads to Beirut’s international airport. Most of the houses standing there are illegal constructions, quickly erected for a life alongside the road. Karam Ghossein, who also works as a cameraman for other video artists from Lebanon, combines pictures from a commissioned production he shot on the occasion of a friend’s wedding in 2004 with street impressions from the present day. Past events can’t be told apart from the observations of today: a kaleidoscope of stories that take place on this highway.