LIFE ON HOLD: JOCELYNE SAAB, A VOICE FOR THE DISPLACED

Across documentaries, fictions and experimental films, pioneering Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab (1948–2019) built a singular exploration of how war suspends everyday life and upends communities, all while displaying an intense solidarity with those most affected by conflict. Born in Beirut to a bourgeois Christian family, Saab’s early interest in moving images was discouraged by her elders, as it was not “a job for girls”. Studying political economy in Lebanon and then France, she was hired by French public broadcaster Antenne 2 (known today as France 2) as a war reporter in 1973, largely owing to her abilities as an Arabic, French and English speaker. Though her dispatches from Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Syria were characterised by a rigorous scrutiny that approached subjects from multiple angles, they are also sympathetic towards Arab society’s most marginalised people. In Saab’s purview, this frequently involved Palestinians displaced by Israel. Leaving French television to document the Lebanese Civil War and free herself from the strictures of news reportage, she developed a very personal essayistic approach – echoing Martin Scorsese’s Italianamerican (1974), Chantal Akerman’s News from Home (1976) and the films of Chris Marker – through the trilogy Beirut, Never Again (1976), A Letter from Beirut (1978) and Beirut, My City (1982). Exiled by the destruction of her house, Saab reimagined her experiences as narrative cinema, eventually moving into installation and video art. Across various forms she held her unwavering commitment to those fighting against oppression right up until her final film, My Name is Mei Shigenobu (2018), a delicate portrait of the Japanese-Palestinian journalist and activist. With the films long difficult to see, this program presents recent restorations of Saab’s work. It focuses on a cross-section of her documentaries chronicling Palestinian experience and Zionist aggression in Lebanon, and includes her debut fiction film, The Razor’s Edge (1985).

Wednesday 18 November

7:00pm JOCELYNE SAAB AND THE PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE

Jocelyne Saab (1974–1982) 87 mins – Unclassified 15+

Though Saab chronicled multiple conflicts, she remained most committed to the Palestinian struggle. This program contains five of her most important works. Palestinian Women (1974) profiles militants, students and educators, and remained unfinished after her Antenne 2 boss dragged her from the editing room. The Rejection Front (1975) documents the routines and ideology of a group splintered from the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Children of War (1976) uses Saab’s own camera to connect with survivors of a Lebanese Front massacre. Saab’s masterwork, Beirut, My City (1982), maps the remains of her own destroyed West Beirut home alongside firsthand footage of the Israeli siege and PLO exit. Forced to leave Lebanon herself, a melancholy sympathy marks The Ship of Exile (1982), a portrayal of Yasser Arafat’s journey to Greece.

8:45pm THE RAZOR’S EDGE

Jocelyne Saab (1985) 103 mins – Unclassified 15+

Saab’s fiction feature debut came after years of working as a journalist, and traces similar themes to her lauded Beirut trilogy. Set amidst the Lebanese Civil War and made while Beirut was under attack from foreign forces, Saab and cinematographer Claude La Rue capture a vibrant sense of precarious life and place in a disappearing city of ruin and rubble. Written with French screenwriter Gérard Brach, the film posits memory as a key to cultural and political resistance. With Jacques Weber, Hala Bassam, Youssef Housni and Juliet Berto in a small role.

4K DCP restored in 2025 by Association Jocelyne Saab in collaboration with Cinémathèque suisse and the Cinémathèque québécoise.