˝When I first received an invitation to curate a video programme for the 12th International Festival of Contemporary Arts – City of Women, I felt that I would be expected to present works dealing with the current crisis in Lebanon. But I decided not to. The wars in Lebanon are like a necklace of beads that have different shapes and colours; we are now experiencing another war but it is all the same war, and we are just living different variations of it. It never stopped. It never stops. It feels as if it is embedded in our lives, at some points dormant, at others destructively active. It’s as if we exist in the shadow of a volcano, and every so often it has to erupt and destroy in order for us to begin living again. The videos I am presenting were made before the onset of the current crisis, but they are never far from it.˝ (Christine Tohme)
Retrovizor is a non-profit utopian cinema. It screens a variety of films from various periods, and its objective remains to explore and provide insight into the invisible cultures of moving images.
I Had a Dream, Mom...
Lebanon, 2006, video, 45’
Robert Abirached has often told me that it is in the effervescence of the irrational, caught at the most intimate point of individual experience, that one must perhaps seek an alternative humanism; namely, a possible basis for a different order.
One day - or one night rather - I had a dream. I told it to my mother; she understood, and threw the ball back into my court, but I failed to catch it…
Ça sera beau: From Beirut with Love
France, 2005, 16mm, 30’
Beirut – or indeed maybe any city, anywhere – is at war with itself. Here, no conflict is ever resolved, and no wall is ever repaired. The explosions resonate better in this city full of holes. Young men who live here are caught between military service and religious affiliation. I visit some friends, gather their suicidal testaments. No one goes anywhere. I cross my city in every way possible, day and night.
