Lebanon,
2001, 52 min
Shown in 2001
CREDITS
- dir
-
Joana Hadjithomas
- prod
-
Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige
- cam
-
Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige
- editor
-
Michele Tyan
- cast
-
Souha Bechara, Afif Hammoud, Neeman Nasrallah, Rajaé Abou Hamain, Kifah Afifé
- source
-
Idéale Audience, 6, rue de l’Agent Bailly, 75009 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1-53-20-14-01. EMAIL: clatour@ideale-audience.fr
- premiere
-
North American Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Screened with Sanyu.
OTHER
A barren room. A chair. A camera. And accounts of confinements, tortures and survival. Six individuals describe the more than ten years each spent interned in the Khiam detention camp, built in 1985 by Israel’s auxiliary militia, the South Lebanon Army. They tell of daily life: solitary confinement in rooms no bigger than closets, or six people packed in one cell, allowed only their prison uniforms, a mattress and a blanket. Deprived of everything except dreams, they hide scraps of life—stones, cheese wrappers, garbage—and create art. Khiam is elemental cinema: the camera merely observes, letting the prisoners paint the picture. Their stories are graphic, brutal, sometimes horrifying, but they, and the film, remain alive. The final images, of the artwork they created out of ruins, are victories without speeches: unvanquished, a tribute to the struggle to live and dream.
—Jason Sanders
FACTOID #33
French New Wave actress Jeanne Moreau’s 1974 Festival tribute, called “a veritable orgy” for her fans by the Examiner’s Stanley Eichelbaum, included screenings of four films (The Lovers, Jules and Jim, Bay of Angels and Diary of a Chambermaid), an onstage interview with Moreau and an additional two hours of clips. Running nine to 11 hours (depending on the source), the tribute was the longest recorded at the Festival.
