Panos Aprahamian

Beirut, on an autumn day. The city is on the edge of chaos, but for Maya, Tarek, Yasmina and Rami, aged between 17 and 22 years old, it is just an ordinary day during which they question themselves about sex, love and night time hanging out.

Based on a true story, 'God Is The Greatest' is a short film about hope, humanity, and loss. Focusing on a brief moment in a complicated conflict, the film depicts how the lives of ordinary people are being unraveled on the periphery of the brutal civil war in Syria.

A family finds itself violently ripped apart from their native home and thrown into the sea, in search of a better future. A forest is raised to the ground to make way for industrialised agriculture. Images of a barren desert arrive from a lost future. A city seen from the sky expands, absorbing everything in its path. An unnamed narrator reads a letter addressed to an unborn descendant.

Four filmmakers and videographers were invited by the Beirut Art Center (BAC) to make a short narrative film using only recordings from the 6 security cameras set up in the BAC’s space. During the preparations for these commissions, a heavier reference imposed itself onto the visual imaginaries tied to the CCTV footage, and that is the anticipation of the disaster that rushed into the intimacy of our lives and demolished our shelters.

For many inhabitants of this world, the dystopia is not a future possibility but rather a historical reality. Odorless Blue Flowers Awake Prematurely is dystopian nonfiction, a science-fiction documentary, which explores Beirut’s peripheral rustbelt that sits on the banks of the city’s river and is affected by the blast on August 4, 2020.