The New Lebanese Cinema of the 1970s and 1980s

November 10–December 10, 2022

This small series features new restorations of works by three filmmakers from Lebanon who bear witness to its difficult history: Borhane Alaouié, Jocelyne Saab, and Heiny Srour.

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Leila and the Wolves
Beirut, My City
Beirut, the Encounter

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Past Films

Beirut the Encounter
- Sunday, November 13 7 PM
- Saturday, December 10 4:30 PM
Borhane Alaouié
Lebanon, Tunisia, Belgium, 1981
Cosponsored by the Arab Film and Media Institute

Two young people separated by the war make tapes for each other. “The monologues, by the well-known writer Ahmad Baydoun, which form the basis of this acutely observed, moving film, have acquired classical status in Lebanese cinema” (Alia Arasoughly).

Introduced by Jonathan Mackris
Leila and the Wolves
- Thursday, November 17 7 PM
Heiny Srour
United Kingdom, Lebanon, Belgium, Netherlands, 1984
BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
Cosponsored by the Arab Film and Media Institute

“Drawing on the Arab heritage of oral tradition and the mosaic-like storytelling of The Arabian Nights, Leila and the Wolves is an exploration of the collective memory of Arab women and their hidden role in the recent history of Palestine and Lebanon” (Tarek Elhaik).

Introduced by Jonathan Mackris
Jocelyne Saab: The Beirut Trilogy
- Thursday, November 10 7 PM
Cosponsored by the Arab Film and Media Institute

“Lyrical and uncompromising, the [trilogy of] films of Jocelyne Saab are at once landmark works of Lebanese cinema and masterpieces of the essay film form” (Film at Lincoln Center).

Introduced by Jonathan Mackris

The New Lebanese Cinema of the 1970s and 1980s

November 10–December 10, 2022

This small series features new restorations of works by three filmmakers from Lebanon: Borhane Alaouié, Jocelyne Saab, and Heiny Srour. They share a belief that cinema can have a transformative effect on political action, a belief that placed their work at the center of debates within French film criticism at Cahiers du cinéma and Cinéthique in the 1970s. All three came to filmmaking in and around the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, part of a generation of filmmakers sometimes referred to as the New Lebanese Cinema, and used the medium as an extension of their activism. To this end, all three may be broadly characterized as pan-Arab filmmakers, often working in a wide variety of contexts outside of Lebanon (Alaouié in Egypt; Saab in Libya, Algeria, and Iraq; Srour in Palestine). All three have ample experience with documentary and freely meld this experience with their fiction, eschewing, like many modern...

—Jonathan Mackris, Guest Curator

For this program, Jonathan Mackris translated Nicole Brenez’s article “Jocelyne Saab, the Stars of War.”

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Jonathan Mackris is a doctoral student in film and media at UC Berkeley. The New Lebanese Cinema of the 1970s and 1980s is a project of the UC Berkeley graduate course in film curating taught by BAMPFA curator Kathy Geritz in Fall 2021. Cosponsored by the Arab Film and Media Institute. With thanks to Caleb Murray-Bozeman; Mounir El Abbassi, Association des Amis de Jocelyne Saab; Naja Al Achkar, Nadi LeKol Nas; Charlotte Procter, Cinenova Distribution; and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley.

The New Lebanese Cinema of the 1970s and 1980s

November 10–December 10, 2022

Past Films

Beirut the Encounter

Leila and the Wolves

Jocelyne Saab: The Beirut Trilogy