On journalists and the job they do by Nichole Sobecki

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On journalists and the job they do

by Nichole Sobecki

10 April 2007

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Beirut - Lebanon is overrun with journalists. Attracted by the upheaval of the Middle East and Beirut's lifestyle advantages, this city has long been a haven for reporters working throughout the region. This month Beirutis will host a few more hacks when "Journalists on the Edge" opens at Hamra's Metropolis Art Cinema.

The event represents the first collaboration between Metropolis and the Harat Hreik-based non-profit civil company Umam: Documentation and Research. Aside from organising cultural events like this one, Umam deals with issues related to civil violence and war memories with the aim of building an archive of documents relating to Lebanon's history from the civil war until today.

This archive, only recently organised in its current form, has been a long-term project of Umam's directors, Monika Borgmann and Lokman Slim, and includes audio interviews, books, newspapers and journals, and "gray literature" (small booklets, leaflets, posters, flyers, and photographs).

Hania Mroue, director of the Metropolis Art Cinema, says she decided to embark on the "Journalists on the Edge" series this April to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.

"And yet, the threat of a second civil war in Lebanon is still strongly present in our daily life," Mroue says. "There's a whole generation that knows nothing about this war and appear unconsciously ready to repeat the same mistakes.

"We decided to show the journalists perspective because of the power of the media in the current dilemma the country is going through and the work of propaganda that some media are using to influence public opinion," she explained.

The screening event opens tonight with "War Shots" (1996), a provocative drama by German director Heiner Stadler. Filmed in Lebanon and Somalia, the film follows the exploits of a band of international war correspondents as they try to cover a violent civil war of a fictional African country.

Most of the story centres on one photojournalist, Jan Loy, and the moral dilemmas that arise from a photograph that he took in war-torn Dublin. The image depicts the very moment that an Irish Republican Army truck driver was killed by British gunfire and brings Loy international fame and recognition. It also begins to suffocate Loy with a sense of responsibility for the death. As Loy enters deeper into his own sense of guilt he is forced to choose between whether or not to get directly involved in the fight.

"Dialogue - in terms of exchange, confrontation, openness - is something we lack in our country," Mroue says.

Moderated discussions will following each of the event's screenings "in order to open [the audience's] minds, and to expose them to new thoughts that will make them feel uncomfortable about many preconceived ideas and prejudices that they have."

On April 12 the series' focus shifts back home with "Circle of Deceit" (1981) a story set in the early years of Lebanon's Civil War by renowned director Volker Schlondorff.

The film chronicles the war from the perspective of Hamburg newspaperman Georg Laschen (Bruno Ganz) and a cynical coterie of international journalists. When Laschen's affair with a beautiful German expat widow evolves into something more than an indulgence, the war's bloody whirlpool of brutality threatens Laschen's neutrality and his civilised self-control.

The third film, "Kigali, des Images Contre un Massacre" (released as "Return to Kigali" in 2006) plays on April 19. The lone documentary in the series, the film records the personal journey of director Jean-Christophe Klotz, a French cameraman present during the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans in April 1994.

With Alain Resnais' "Hiroshima Mon Amour" (1959), the last of the series, "Journalists on the Edge" takes up a more subtle approach to the theme. This French-Japanese classic tells the story of a young French actress making an anti-war film in the rebuilt Japanese city of Hiroshima - devastated in a World War II nuclear blast.

"These films inspire questions as to what extent one can be neutral," Borgmann says. Each film is set during a point of violent tragedy and consequence, be it real or imagined. Through the eyes of their chroniclers, they address not only the events themselves but how they will be remembered.

"Given that memory persists as a vivid and potent force," Borgmann writes on Umam's website, "easily activated and hard to suppress [by forced 'forgiveness' or otherwise], two questions arise: Can we, as Lebanese, assume that 'forgetting' will ensure civil calm? Isn't engaging with our history the less perilous path?

"We are living in a country that tried to finish years of violence by amnesty laws," Borgmann says. "What do you do if you believe on a personal level that a process of truth-seeking is necessary for society?

"Of course memories are not absolute truths," she continues. Neither are films.

Filmmakers create a new and individual world that responds to the history of their own reality. By focusing on those whose careers are built upon dissecting and disseminating the politics and violence of war, these films consider these dramatic and disturbing episodes through a double lens. "Journalists on the Edge" challenges the audience to not simplify reality but to reflect on the contradictions inherent in interpreting history.

"These films have a political message because they ask, 'What is my responsibility toward a country if I am reporting on it, if I am living in it?'" reflects Borgmann. "To what extent can I say 'It doesn't affect me'?"

"Journalists on the Edge" opens at Hamra's Metropolis Art Cinema (Masrah al-Madina, Saroulla Building) tonight at 8pm. Screenings will take place every Thursday evening. All films are subtitled in English.

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* Nichole Sobecki is a Beirut-based writer and photographer. This abridged article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org. The full text is available at www.dailystar.com.lb.

Source: Daily Star, 5 April 2007, www.dailystar.com.lb
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.


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