Fquotes of life, of a country that at every conflict, every crisis rises from its ashes. “They are only the walls, we are alive” is the observation of a young reporter sent to tell of the last bombing and which is to contemplate the ruins of their home.
Wool Daher with his first film, 5 years of research work in the archives (20 thousand sources)did something that wasn’t there. He gave his country, Lebanon, and to his city, Beirut, with whom he is clearly in love, a story. Because, as he explains Do you love mepassed as a special event to the days of the Venetian authors And now selected by the Florentine Festival Middle East Now: “Contemporary history in Lebanon is not taught”. Difficult to stay behind updates, “In Lebanon the story is done every second” Confirm Lana Daher. And the choice not to follow a chronological order in the presentation of its rich material wanted: “Disorientation is part of the journey”.
The film begins in music and the title comes from a very popular song in Lebanon, composed of the famous Bandaly family.
The film opens with an acoustic version of Do you love me played with the OUD (instrument of the family of short -handle louts, editor’s note) from René Bandaly, an incredible musician and a singer with a wonderful voice. Theirs was a family of 13 people, TV often hosted them and René’s daughter, Re-Mi, was the only prodigy girl that Lebanese music had. He already sang at 4 years old, also performed in front of the French president. Over time, the songs of the Bandaly became hymns of hope and freedom, not only for Lebanon but for many Arab countries during conflicts. I interviewed René a few years before he died, in 2018-2019, when I started working on the film, in his home in Tripoli: he told me that his motivation was show the West that you could make music in European languages, but in Mawwalthe shade of Arab music.
One of the archives of Do You Love Me.
His film also has an experimental coté. The archive materials he found are fantastic. She has found them and are now available online. In a country that does not have a national archive.
My obsession for Do you love me And for the video of the song, he soon left room for the interest in the space that the video portrayed: it was Beirut and brought me back to my childhood in the 90s, to my city immediately after the end of the civil war. Looking at him I remembered that I saw Remi Bandaly often on TV dressed in bright clothes, but the whole environment around me was gray, it was a city just out of the war. The contrast between the world of TV and the real world was very strong. So I started to explore that space and I entered the fantastic universe of Lebanese independent cinemaI saw a lot of movies that were accessible at the time. And then all the possible archives, Radio Liban, Télé Liban, all local and national TV stations. It was not easy, the Lebanese government does not take care of its citizens and not even cultural institutions, but fortunately the people who work there are incredible, they make miracles and without funds. I found real gems, photos, videos, inside rusty drawers, in wet and abandoned cellars. I visited the universities where the protocol to access the archives is long and laborious, I have done research for years in private collections. I didn’t know what I would use, but soon on the path it was clear to me that the film would be only archives. I felt that everything was already there, that what I had answered my questions, that there was no need to film anything.
Lana Daher: “Music is the place where we take refuge”
What guidelines was given when it was to keep or discard?
Taking is always very difficult. But it was sure I didn’t want the faces of politicians: the film is political, but I didn’t want politics to be there. In Lebanon we are nauseated by the voices and faces of politics, they are everywhere. I wanted society, people’s experiences. There are the voices of photographers, musicians, journalists, filmmakers, citizens. And then I didn’t want to show the images of the massacres, I didn’t want to death in the film. I wanted music, which is an important part of the life of the Lebanese, it is a place where we also take refuge in war. And soon we understood, together with Qutaiba Barhamji (Syrian editor who also edited the editing of The Voice of Hind Rajab, editor’s note), That in my selection 80% was Lebanese independent cinema, and I understood that my vision of Beirut was the result of all the stratified looks of the filmmakers who came before me, from the 1950s to today.
More than half a century, the representation of the history of a very complex country. What relationship did he have with his city over time?
I went back to live permanently in Lebanon after the end of the war, but also during the conflict – I was a girl – with my parents we often returned. We ran away quickly when there were escalations. I had already lived in many different cities before I turned 7. The film was presented in Venice and will now travel to other festivals. The spectators I have met so far tell me they have learned something by looking at him. Many instinctively feel a connection with a place they did not know, but which shares the fate of many other places in the world and history.
From Do You Love Me: The Bombox (1995) by Fouad Elkoury.
Her is an international fate, but she still lives in Beirut. How do you see the two crucial issues today: the fate of the south of the country already occupied in the past by Israel and still today, despite the ceased the fire, regularly bombed, and the disarmament of Hezbollah?
It is difficult for me to talk about it, I have been Beirut in the last 3 months of this war and it has been one of the saddest and most traumatizing experiences of my life. I was also there for the explosion of the port in 2020, the house in which I was destroyed, many people I know were injured, I was there for the 2006 war. I have lived all the cycles of the war since the end of the 80s, but nothing was as violent as this war. It is complicated to predict what will happen. I feel neither safe nor happy, I think that Lebanon is at the edge of something tragic. That there are powers that play with people’s fate and that use us because we are vulnerable.
The question never to be asked to a Lebanese: what confession does it belong to? And is it important for her?
I come from one Shiite family of the south of the country, my mother is shooting which was almost completely destroyed in the last war, My father is from Nabatiye, a city on the border with Israel. I think I have lived this last war in a different way from most of the Lebanese. But in the film I made the choice to distance themselves from the world from which I come. Because the religion that I inherited from my family is one of the richest and most beautiful practices that I know and I am deeply attached to all its traditions, but is represented in a very simplifying way by the media. Also in Lebanon the stereotypes about what it means to be Shiite abound. I was born in Beirut and I grew up there. I went to a private school, I attended all kinds of person, I have been attached to my country and I have always been working to break the stereotype, on what the amazement arouses when I say that I am Muslim, or that I am Shiite, and I feel answered: «I don’t seem to be. You express you so well, you have studied, you are not veiled ».
From Do You Love Me: © Whispers (1980) by Maroun Bagdadi
His was not an artistic family. How was your desire for cinema born?
I trained in graphic design and in the applied arts, but I also worked a lot with sound and image, I made music videos, this is my first film. It is true my parents are not artists, but my mom has always been very creative, paints and works ceramics, pushed me to be creative in turn, but I am the first who did a job. My father is a neurosurgeon, and I would say that basically he is very creative too.
In reality, the cultural life in Beirut has never stopped, even in the most tragic moments.
We Lebanese live with very high levels of cortisol (the so -called stress hormone, editor’s note) in the blood. When you are in a space where death is strongly present, life is also: in Beirut feel that there is an energy, a hunger that never goes out. I noticed it when I left it to mount the movie. For 4, 5 weeks my nervous system calmed down. We inhabitants of Beirut are all traumatizedevery time I close a window or a door display images that most people will never see in his life. A part of me is always at the limit because we never feel safe anywhere. Still, even if Beirut is the place of the world I feel more, I also feel that none of us really belongs to you, because our efforts to try to coexist are always frustrated. THE our bodies are traveled by energy discharges that we do not know how to manage And we finish putting that energy in the things we love. I put them in the cinema and consider what I do my form of resistance.
Do you love me: © by Eliane Raheb.
Even the music that inspired his film has always been lived as a form of resistance in Lebanon. At one time there was Fairouz to unite the whole Arab world with his music. But it was the generation before his. Do Music in Lebanon still has this role?
The son of Fairouz (Auntad Rahbani, did so, editor’s note) Until a few weeks ago when it is gone. His was a music full of humor and very political. Fairouz at 89 years old continues to represent a reference for all generations, including mine. When we listened to Fairouz as a child on the radio we knew that things were going badly, if the situation precipitated in the country his voice became something to take refuge in. For me, it remains an incredible artist and some of his songs move me as nothing else in the world.
Florence, 7-12 October, Cinema La Compagnia, Cinema Astra. Info: Middleastnow.it