[LCM Articles] Daily Star: Lebanon, Beyond mass media

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Daily Star: Lebanon, Beyond mass media
http://tadamon.resist.ca/index.php/post/773

Alex Selim, The Daily Star
Thursday, July 19, 2007

Project empowers members of hardest-hit communities to express their own 
stories and opinions about conflict through photographs and videos...

BEIRUT: Last summer's war with Israel drew the world's attention, once again, 
to Lebanon in a state of siege. During the 34 days of bombardment, most of the 
stories and images about the war came filtered through the mainstream media. 
Some journalists and photographers for both domestic and international press 
outlets reported their stories with a tinge of their own or their employer's 
political bias. Lost in such coverage was the perspective of private citizens 
who lived through the upheaval.

Lens on Lebanon, an international grassroots documentary project that was 
formed during the war, is actively trying to correct that perceived mainstream 
media bias by empowering Lebanese residents from all walks of life to tell 
their own stories through photographs and videos.

The organization provided equipment, technical training and artistic support 
for participants living in affected areas so they could creatively document 
their experiences with photo-narratives and video diaries.

Lens on Lebanon presented its first screening session last Saturday at Hamra's 
T-Marbouta Cafe, where an exhibition of photographs remains on view through 
July 30. Organizers have also posted the videos and photo essays onto the Lens 
on Lebanon Website.

Some of the films and videos dealt directly with the war, others with the 
political issues that surrounded it. Some showed images of destruction, while 
others showed the banal details of life in refugee relief centers and 
bombed-out villages.

"We are becoming more aware of the power of the community to record conflict," 
says Samar Maakaron, one of the organizers of Lens on Lebanon. Maakaron joined 
the project in January after returning to Beirut from London, where she earned 
a master's degree from Goldsmiths, a prestigious art school associated with the 
University of London. She stresses the importance of regular citizens 
expressing their own perspectives, especially if they aren't normally 
represented in the popular media.

"People need to say things that are not on Al-Manar TV and Future TV, not on 
mainstream TV," she says.

One of the films screened on Saturday, entitled "Martyrdom," was created by a 
group of participants from the Dahiyeh. It showed a mother articulating her 
feelings about her son's martyrdom. The filmmakers asked other women from the 
area whether or not they would offer their husbands or sons as martyrs. The 
responses were as surprising as they were diverse.

Another participant, Sahar al-Bashir, attended a Lens on Lebanon workshop at 
the Blue Mission Training Center for Community Development in Sidon. She says 
the project offered her an opportunity to voice an independent opinion.

"If I were working for Al-Manar, I would have said, 'I love the war,' and if I 
were working for Future I would have said, 'I hate the war,' but I said it as I 
really felt it," explains Sahar, a 21-year-old student who is pursuing a degree 
in media and documentary studies at the Lebanese University.

Bashir's film "Amin (Faith)" follows her sister Amin as she tours their 
village, which was heavily bombed during the war, and describes her feelings 
about leaving home. The film ends with Amin saying: "It wasn't my decision to 
start or end the war or to be for peace or against it. Everything is imposed on 
us. But the only thing I'm sure of, no one can impose on me my love [of] my 
country. I love my country from my heart."

Bashir credited the organizers with encouraging her and her fellow participants 
to "find stories that they lived," and giving them the freedom to choose their 
subject matter, and to film and photograph and edit it themselves, with help if 
help was needed. "It was really our work," Bashir says.

The Lens on Lebanon project began when Mahmoud Zeidan, a Palestinian who was 
born in the Ain al-Hilweh camp and is a human rights supervisor for the United 
Nations Relief and Works Agency, and Diana Allan, who is completing a doctorate 
in anthropology and film at Harvard University, traveled to South Lebanon last 
August and began conducting training workshops with a handful of Polaroid, 
digital and video cameras.

Zeidan and Allan began with their own funding. They developed more workshops. 
Lens on Lebanon now holds two workshops a month in the Dahiyeh (hosted by the 
Sadr Foundation), another two in Sidon (hosted by the Blue Mission) and yet 
another two in Ain al-Hilweh. The project is currently being funded by George 
Soros. Open Society Institute, Oxfam and the London-based group Lebanon United, 
among other supporters.

The workshops focus less on the technical skills of operating a camera than on 
building the themes that participants use as a foundation for their work. For 
example, a workshop entitled "Reflections after the War," held in the Dahiyeh, 
aimed to create short films addressing the effects of the 2006 war on the 
community's sense of national identity. Another workshop entitled "The Other," 
held in Sidon, encouraged women to make photo essays about, well, "the other".

One Lens on Lebanon participant, Jamileh al-Amin, who is in her 50s, came to 
Maakaron's "The Other" workshop doubting whether or not she would be able to 
use a camera to create an artwork.

"She thought that it was too late for her to learn," Maakaron recalls. "Society 
would tell her that it was for her kids to learn but not for her."

However, as the discussion continued in the workshop, she became more 
comfortable and more enthusiastic about the project, though as one of the more 
serious people in the workshop, she also doubted whether or not she could have 
a sense of humor with her photo essay.

But Amin's work, entitled "About the Other," is one of the more incisive pieces 
in the exhibition at T-Marbouta, and it hinges on genuine wit. The photo essay 
features pictures of a woman in various outfits transposed with photographs of 
mannequins wearing different hats. It includes Amin's narration, which states: 
"Why [is it that] when my daughter is fashionable and sexy, I find her very 
pretty, cute and cool, but the other girl on the street dressed in the same way 
has bad taste and probably no decency whatsoever?"

The Lens on Lebanon project certainly fills a void in terms of media coverage 
devoted to conflict, but when asked if the project also serves a therapeutic 
purpose, Maakaron is quick to ask: "For whom?" In answer to her own question, 
she notes that the project is just as fulfilling for her as it is for the 
participants.

"We don't like to say that we're making miracles. But we are making little 
differences."

Lens on Lebanon's exhibition of narrative photo essays is on view at the 
T-Marbouta Cafe in Hamra's Pavillon Center through July 30. For more 
information, please call +961 1 352 302

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