Two short films from the legendary late Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyn Saab are set to stream for free online for one week only at the end of this month.
Both Palestinian Women (1974) and Children of War (1976) will be streaming as part of the Mizna Film Series from June 23 to 27. The film series will be running for one week each month for the next three months, with a focus on Beirut the year after the devastating Beirut Port explosion.
The June program focuses on Saab’s work on the Palestinians in Beirut’s refugee camps and slums, and will also include online discussions and critical writing published on Mizna’s website.
Tickets to the online event are ‘pay what you want’, so they are free if you so choose, though you’re encouraged to financially support this initiative if you are able to.
Palestinian Women was originally commissioned for French television but never aired due to internal censorship. This was an issue that Saab, who often chronicled hot button issues, often faced in her career.
The film features interviews with women in refugee camps, during training, and at university, giving viewers an intimate look into the Palestinian people of the time through a feminist and class-focused lens.
Children of War, made two years after Palestinian Women, chronicles the days after the 1976 Karantina massacre, perpetrated by militias in a Palestinian slum near the port of Beirut.
In the film, Saab meets a group of children who escaped the carnage, giving the children, many of whom had lost family members in the massacre, crayons and encourages them to draw while she films. While filming, Saab makes a bitter discovery: mirroring what they were witnessing and experiencing in wartime, the only play the children engage in are war games. War games quickly bleed back into life, the film finds.
The films have been recently restored and were never widely available, so the opportunity to see them is rare.
Also available as part of the June series is War Generation – Beirut, a 1988 film from Mai Masri & Jean Chamoun filmed on the streets of Beirut. It explores the life experiences of young people as they struggle to survive growing up in Lebanon’s capital city, ravaged by thirteen years of war. Featuring interviews with young people as they go about their daily lives, this award-winning documentary traces the nuanced history of Lebanon’s Civil War and the ways of life that have emerged from it.
The Mizna Film Series series is curated by Michelle Baroody, Mizna Film Programs Curator, and Ahmed AbdulMageed, Mizna Film Programs Coordinator, with input from Mizna’s Film Screening Committee.
The film holds in-person screenings on the fourth Wednesday of every month for audiences in Minnesota in the US, but are also available for virtual screening across the world.
To attend online screenings, viewers can purchase individual tickets or a three-pack pass that can be used for any three programs throughout the year.
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