There has been much discussion in certain cultural milieus in Beirut about All this Victory (Ar: Jidār al-Sawt, trans: The Sound Barrier). Since I’m one of the few people who’ve seen the film and am in constant conversation with the director, Ahmad Ghossein, and despite preferring absolute silence so that...  more

Syrians won’t be hurt by some filmmaker borrowing images of their suffering as a metaphor so as to make images of his own personal or collective suffering. Ahmed Ghossein won’t be the first in this regard, nor will he be the last. Ultimately cinema, like all art, is merely a...  more

In 2017, the artist Ahmed Ghossein presented works in Marfa’ Gallery in Beirut entitled There is No Right or Wrong Here (Arabic: al-arḍ li-man yuḥarriruhā, trans: The Land Belongs to Whoever Liberates it), in which he discusses the real estate situation in South Lebanon through the story of his father...  more

The case began with a piece of gossip or info that spread by whispers, mixed here with sarcasm and there with a sort of ‘moralizing’ surprise… “Did Ahmad really go to Syria to film?” …The question spread and the circle in-the-know widened, as did those who were expected to take...  more

In the film Recollection (2015), the Palestinian director Kamal Jafari gathers all the Israeli and American films filmed in his hometown, Jaffa. He breaks them down into thousands of images, and then proceeds to efface the images of the actors so that only the city of Jaffa and its inhabitants...  more

It’s becoming increasingly common for filmmakers to use the houses and neighbourhoods of destroyed and displaced Syrian towns and cities as locations for films sponsored and encouraged by the Syrian regime and its allies.   After being granted permission by the military authorities controlling these neighbourhoods, they become sets for a wide...  more