Category : Arts
I’m a huge fan of Monocle magazine, and have been reading every issue religiously since its launch a couple of years ago. The magazine has always had a loving relationship with Beirut, and we’re often featured alongside Sao Paolo, Tokyo, Copenhagen and Cape Town as one of the most exciting places to live and work. Finally, the magazine’s weekly radio show has broadcast from Lebanese capital. It is a refreshingly honest conversation, both heartwarming and utterly scary, much like Beirut itself. Here’s the synopsis from the website and a link to the streaming podcast:
The Monocle Weekly takes its first trip to Beirut this week and kicks off with a briefing on the state of politics in the region with Nicholas Noe, political analyst and editor-in-chief of the news service Mideastwire.com. Architect Raed Abillama is in the studio to share his views on architectural preservation as Beirut continues to develop at top speed, and pioneering Lebanese music producer Zeid Hamdan plays some of his latest tracks. Finally, we check in with Kamal Mouzawak to hear about Tawlet, his unique new culinary concept in Beirut that has the Monocle team hooked.
Listen to the podcast here.
Here’s a trailer for a documentary project on the underground music scene in the Arab world, specifically Beirut. It’s very well made and offers some valuable insights into a scene that’s sadly still shunned by the mainstream, who prefer their stars lip-synched and surgically-enhanced. Like someone says in the video: “popstars sing dreams, we sing [...]
So I might be a tad late commenting on the two main Oscar nominees, but who cares. So Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron used to be married and now they both have movies nominated for 9 Oscars.
Cameron has always been a specialist of the big brainless money-churning blockbuster. He’s brought us such visionary films as Terminator 2, Titanic and True Lies. He even wrote Rambo. And now comes Avatar. The first reason I hate Avatar is the slew of 3D films it has spawned. Now every studio thinks they can make a billion dollars by making us wear stupid glasses and get slightly queasy at the sight of various objects coming our way in a darkened room. At least they’re not the silly red and green glasses of my childhood, which made you look like a genetic reject.
So here we sit, faced with the awfully named Pandora, a rainforest on acid inhabited by a race of annoyingly and relentlessly new-age oversized Smurfs. Its basically a John Smith meets Pocahontas story set in an improbably elaborate environment some 150 years in the future. You’d think that 150 years from now people would have stopped using unmistakably Bush-era terms like shock-and-awe and vilifying big heartless corporations. To be fair to Cameron, the movie took years to elaborate, and much of those years (8 to be specific) were spent under the mind-numbing gung-ho attitude of the Bush neocons. And the film has been met by conservatives in the US with much ire. All the quacks from Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh have taken to calling Cameron a tree-hugging, America-hating, Marx-loving, sandal-wearing commie. That’s the kind of treatment usually reserved for the latest outings by Michael Moore or Oliver Stone. The right-wing hatred of the film is probably the only thing it has going for it in my view.
Don’t get me wrong, the experience is entirely immersive. The vistas on Pandora are absolutely breathtaking, especially in 3D. You kind of come out wishing you could book a holiday on one of the floating mountains. The film is also a new benchmark with regards to technology in movie making. However, I was consistently annoyed by the pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo and caricature Marine oafs and corporate whores. I mean, surely audiences in 2010 are capable of accepting more subtlety from their blockbusters than this. You just need to look at franchises like the Bourne Identity to see how subtle yet entertaining popcorn movies can be. A Slate review of the film notes that the original Sanskrit meaning of “avatar”—the bodily form taken by a deity descending to earth—is also suggested in this movie’s quasi-religious cosmology. But so what? Superficial depth of analysis is far worse than a deeply superficial story.
The Hurt Locker on the other hand, is what movie screens were made for. It deals in a more direct and less insulting fashion with the implications of warfare in far-flung places. The film starts in the summer of 2004, where Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge of Bravo Company are at the volatile center of the war, part of a small counterforce specifically trained to handle Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), that account for more than half of American hostile deaths and have killed thousands of Iraqis. It’s a high-pressure, high-stakes assignment which becomes glaringly apparent when they lose their team leader during a mission. The gleefully reckless Staff Sergeant William James (an amazing Jeremy Renner) takes over, much to the dismay of the rest of the team. Throughout the film we slowly realize that James is a hybrid of a swaggering cowboy, a highly professional solider and a real human being.
Its impossibly tense from the get-go and the film basically swings back and forth from ultimate boredom to impossibly dangerous situations. A perfect representation of time spent in the war theatre. The depiction of Iraq in 2003 is spot on, and as someone who lives in the Middle East I can safely say that the cinematography captures the feeling of sweat and claustrophobia and dust hanging in the air perfectly. The acting is spot on by every member of the cast, even the 10 year old Iraqi bootleg DVD salesman at Camp Victory. There isn’t a boring minute throughout, yet the film is rife with contemplations on the nature and legitimacy of war. It examines war as a drug, evident in Jeremy Renner’s free-wheeling adrenaline junkie character who is itching to be sent back on a second tour. The Hurt Locker opens with a quote from War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, a 2002 book by war correspondent and journalist Chris Hedges: “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”
The Oscars have long been a pointless exercise in futility, both as a telecast and as a benchmark by which to judge the year’s films. They are highly political, and no one really cares about them anymore beyond figuring out “who” Beyonce is wearing this year. “Academy Award Winner” is a nice title to blurt out before someone’s name in a trailer, but many of the worlds greatest actors and directors were never recognized with a statuette. So, what I’m trying to say is let’s not pay too much attention to who wins how many trophies on the night itself. If you have to choose between watching Avatar and The Hurt Locker, watch the latter. You’ll have more fun and come out of it having learnt something real and honest about human nature.
Hello everybody! It would seem the swarm of expats is upon us and we’re destined to fester in our cars in traffic jam after traffic jam for the next couple of weeks. I’m actually getting physical cramps in my leg from sitting around with my foot on the brake for half an hour at a [...]
Posted in Arts on 19. Dec, 2009
Anyone in Beirut should head down to Paper Cup Bookshop in Mar Mikhael between 6pm and 8pm today. New York-based Lebanese photographer Rhea Karam will be signing her new book “Breathing Walls”.
BREATHING WALLS is a 168-page hard cover fine art photography book documenting the story of Lebanon through the walls of it’s streets.
Here’s what Rhea wrote about her project on her website while it was still in development:
“By definition, walls are barriers. They can also act as windows to the conflicts engulfing their surroundings. In times of strife walls offer a means of communication and self-expression for members of all social and religious communities. They have proven themselves an effective tool in establishing dialogue between suppressed voices and opinions by offering a canvas or soapbox for the oppressed. The Berlin Wall and The Peace Lines Walls of Northern Ireland are but just two examples. They are storytellers–absorbing and reflecting their surroundings–and becoming silent witnesses to our lives and battles.
When I roam through the city of Beirut and its neighboring villages I cannot help but feel these murals of cement speak to me. Shouting, aggressing my line of sight, sometimes making me smile, prompting a thought, creating an emotion, definitely engaging me in some way; forcing a reaction. I am not able to ignore their imposing presence. Their silence -deafening at times- echoes the city’s many suffocated voices and draws out an undercurrent of tension.
It is perhaps because I have not grown up in Lebanon that they affect me in this way. The local population, familiar to the point of obliviousness, do not often notice them, moving them to the back of their minds with all of the other mundane objects of everyday life. Whether it be political propaganda posters, stencils of young graffiti artists, textures of walls still carrying memories of the war, people have become immune, or perhaps they have chosen to move on.
I am often asked why I photograph Beirut as a ghost town and have omitted human form from my images. Today, urban landscape has made walls part of our natural habitat. They represent as much life as a tree or a flower and have become just as important a presence in our everyday life. They define where we walk, the directions we take, the spaces we choose; they protect us and provide us with shelter and privacy. They lead a double life, sharing our most intimate secrets on the inside and being exposed to the world on the outside. They are life: they breathe, they interact, they evolve.
As a photographer I felt the necessity to document these ephemeral testimonies of life as a record of an important period in Lebanon’s modern history (2007-2009). Only through my lens could I reproduce the reality of these transient walls. My hope is that these images evoke emotions in my viewers, and speak to them about the importance of observing their surroundings with a critical eye. In Lebanon, to find beauty in a cracked wall is to understand history; to see beauty in a graffiti wall is to understand the power of self-expression; and to see beauty in a wall that tells a tale is to understand the power of the brushstroke. I hope this series of images will one day stand as an archive illuminating a story of progress.”
Rayess Bek, also known as Wael Koudaih, is a pioneering Lebanese rap artist. He started off with the group Aks’ser back in the mid-nineties, in a series of cringe-worthy videos of wannabe rap that I remember watching as a kid during holidays in Lebanon. His raps and slams in Arabic and French, are filled with [...]
Mashrou3 Leila is a seven-member Lebanese band that’s been getting bigger and bigger ever since they burst onto the local music scene in 2008. From what I understand, its a haphazard group who first came together at AUB after they answered an ad to join into informal jamming sessions at the university. I like the [...]
Posted in Arts on 28. Nov, 2009
The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space gallery is located in Medawar district of Beirut, better known to those of us unfamiliar with local zoning laws as the area near B018. It is the brain-child of Lea Sednaoui, a graduate of London’s Central Saint Martin’s, and a very welcome addition to the city’s long-neglected art scene. Sednaoui has curated exhibits by foreign as well as local artists, which is just as well because in my opinion art’s primary concern should be intercultural dialogue. You can catch interviews with Lea in Bespoke, NowLebanon and on the fashion website Dia Diwan. I’ll make sure to pass by the gallery this week and collect some of her musings for this blog.
The gallery has featured photography by Balthasar Burkhard and there is currently a showing of paintings by Benoit Debbane. I’d love to give you the address to the place, but as always in Lebanon its a haphazard array of “next to the big tree” and “second left after the man on the plastic chair”. So I’ll let you guys visit the Space’s website and download the very helpful map.
In Loving Memory, Paintings by Benoit Debbane runs until November 29.
Posted in Arts on 27. Nov, 2009
Check out the schedule for goings-on at the Beirut Art Center next month. Born in Flames looks like a must-see to me.
Duet for Cello is a new Lebanese feature film being directed by Wafa’a Halawi, who I met a few days ago with a friend. She’s got all the funding in place and its almost done, and by looks of things its going to be quite something. According to the director, it’s an exploration of relationships [...]
