The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Asian Films list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis
Born in Beirut, Lamia Joreige returned there from France, where she has lived for twenty years, for her documentary inquiry Houna wa roubbama hounak, which takes its title from a 1976 Godard film, but which draws inspiration also from Chris Marker’s Chronicle of a Summer (1961), in which Parisian passers-by are asked “Are you happy?” Joreige’s question refers to Lebanon’s civil war (roughly, 1975-90), challenging her birth nation’s official amnesia on the topic (despite a loss of 150,000 lives, its history isn’t taught in Lebanese schools): “Do you know of anyone who was kidnapped from around here during the war?” Joreige travels the old line of demarcation between Muslim West Beirut and Christian East Beirut, prodding memories with her question. At each crossing or checkpoint, a freeze frame implies a residual impasse, war’s ongoing legacy. Late in the film Joreige reveals her own family’s stake in her inquiry into wartime disappearances at the hands of militias.
About faces, fears and the heartache of survivors, hers is one of the most intensely moving films I have seen. Some interviewees recall the abduction and disappearance of neighbors; others, of loved ones. Some open up, responding with a torrent of recollection; others, wary, hesitate or even stonewall the question, some defiantly, others apologetically. The psychological scars of war achieve a heartrending metaphor when a man reveals the scar from his open-heart surgery following a medical condition that he attributes to the loss of a son in the war.
Occasionally from the periphery of the gaze of Joreige’s hand-held video camera we see young children. François Truffaut once wrote that children should appear in films only if love is expressed for them. Never have I experienced a film that shows a deeper love for children than Here and Perhaps Elsewhere.
B(U)Y THE BOOK
MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.
Dennis Grunes 