Beirut, My City
In July 1982, the Israeli army besieged Beirut. Journalist and filmmaker Jocelyne Saab watched her home burn down. One hundred and fifty years of family history went up in smoke. She seeks refuge in questions: when did this all start? How did the people of Beirut experience the siege? Each place then becomes a story, and each name is a memory.
Lurking throughout all of Saab’s groundbreaking work is a strong awareness of her subjective role as a documentary filmmaker. Beirut, My City is one of her most impressive films, and it remains topical to this day.
Beirut, My City will be shown alongside Sarah Maldoror’s And the Dogs Kept Silent (1974) and Ahmed Bouanani’s Mémorie 14 (1971) as part of Archives in Dialogue, organised by KASKcinema in collaboration with KASK & Conservatory’s Archival Sensations cluster, a space for reflection on archival practices, art, and memory. This edition highlights films from the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-fascist struggles of the 1960s and 1970s.
Following the films, Anoushka De Andrade, Mathilde Rouxel, and Ali Essafi join artistic researcher Mohanad Yaqubi in a dialogue about the challenges of working with politically charged filmic heritage. The programme offers insights into historical and contemporary archival practices and explores the radical aesthetics of Maldoror, Bouanani, and Saab, and their reflections on decolonisation, solidarity, and revolutionary art.