Latest / Outskirts Film Podcast / #013 - Jocelyne Saab’s Cinema of Ruins and Resistance

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#013 - Jocelyne Saab’s Cinema of Ruins and Resistance · Outskirts Film Podcast

• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Outskirts Film Podcast.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're listening to Christopher Small, and today I'm also joined, as usual, by my co-hosts.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, I'm Oku.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm on so glad.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Jocelyn Saab was one of the undeniably significant filmmakers and figures of Lebanese cinema in the 1970s and 1980s, a polyvalent image maker who worked in shifting ways depending on the vagaries of the era.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: She began as a reporter covering the Lebanese Civil War and the Palestinian liberation struggle up close in a series of short and mid-length feature films during that period.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: These are maybe the films that she's best known for, uh, along with her Beirut trilogy.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Indeed, we previously mentioned in our Edward Yang episode that that filmmaker is one of those most associated with a single city, in that case Taipei.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: But Jocelyn Saab is really no different.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Beirut for her was a city that consumed so much of her attention in a variety of ways over many, many years.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we can start with that very complexity of Saab.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So she was, you know, a simple witness to history, but also not a simple one.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: She was a filmmaker who kept reinventing ways of working because before then, I mean, she was born into this wealthy uh French-speaking Christian family who lived in the mansion that you see at the start of Beirut, my my city, and through there got involved in radio, uh, got involved with some poets and artist types.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually, like she was working as a kind of journalist uh for a Lebanese newspaper, and as part of that was kind of like freelancing within European institutions as like the Lebanon correspondent.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, that led to her uh being hired by the French public broadcaster Antenne d'Eux.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: So she explicitly came to film through journalism.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Those films are, you know, some of them are famous, some of them are not so famous, but they are basically that kind of straightforward reportage style.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then at some point started to see herself more as an artist.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's fair to say, but someone who wants to not just document the world, but to express some kind of like personal perspective on it.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, like a lot of our outskirts filmmakers, let's say, she has a kind of archipelago-like filmography with kind of lots of stops and starts and frustrations and and and all that.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, you know, she's she's someone who, particularly in this first period, had an amazing skill that somehow combined journalistic sort of rigor and good instincts with with a more artistic sensibility that allowed her to more creatively structure her images, find things on the edges of the story, simply to also craft beautiful images and to have a beautiful voiceover.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: But that for me at some point this became too much, you know, became almost too ornamental for what the films are.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's why the I find them so compelling, because of this like impossibility of assuming a like critical distance or like um or like a position that would allow her to adopt a more objective balance between the elements she might she would focus.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it they they I mean this is more like a very philosophical or maybe um self-explanatory thing to say, but like the film themselves are shattered because she can't decide what to focus on.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: That symptom is very interesting to me that she suffers from that.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_09: I guess like the thing with Barrel My City and perhaps associate with other kind of registers, more uh I don't know how to say this beyond like uh more like uh French-fight perhaps, which is this appeal to lyricism, which um again I don't think is like inherently a bad thing per se, in perhaps a way that I feel like it's too ornate, uh, whereas I think like the images themselves and the register itself, which at least for me, um, kind of speaks for itself most of the time.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_09: I think the colonial history also plays a part in that like what kind of like arthouse and like non-commercial films were available.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_09: So it's that there's a genealog genealogy there that I think makes sense, which I don't think is like a criticism per se.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_09: It's just perhaps like this intersection of those influences with certain registers in regards to what uh she's trying to do in different films.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think the Frenchness comes from the f lack of search of form because she kind of re reappropriates the existing type of essay filmmaking tropes or styles.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: She tries through the images, but the skeleton, the structure, is quite the same as the dominant essayistic style filmmaking that also French television and French institute institutions asked or uh maybe encouraged the artists or filmmakers of uh 70s or eight seventies and eighties to make.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_09: Yeah, I think that's definitely a case there also of the material reality of the films, of the co-production aspect of like how they were financed, how they sh were like aimed to look at.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_09: If you're doing like a personal diaristic film, then it then at that moment in time the tradition that was available was perhaps more towards that.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_09: So, yeah, there's like I guess that material element to the composition of these films that I think also plays an important part, and we can't really like look uh apart from that.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: When I was watching the start of um Beirut, My City, I I I was thinking about like the value of having someone like Jocelyn Saab, who is clearly incredibly talented filmmaker, making these films at this exact moment, where she's standing in front of her house and she's talking, and it's you know, it's very matter-of-fact.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: She's talking very specifically about what it means for her house to be destroyed.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And in the first moments of that film, the combination of of the way she's speaking and the images really create something very special to me.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: In the last few years since Israel has been conducting this uh genocide, genocidal war in in Palestine and Lebanon.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people have used this expression live stream genocide, that is kind of like the first live stream genocide, which is a term that I really dislike.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not only because I think a lot of things are still hidden and we don't see a lot of stuff, but that also live streaming is not enough.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Cinema is what is needed to make these things visible somehow.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: To see a filmmaker of her talent and skill assembling those images at the start of Beirut My My City, and finding continuities between images, structuring the images, uh developing rhythm and so on.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was very moved by that, you know, and I realized that like that's almost something that we're missing today.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: The kind of like invention of the internet makes a little more difficult.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Filtering, curating, bringing together, these are gestures of refinement, conceptual editing, than just like here is the here is my here's the distraction, here's the live stream.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Justine Saab also is someone who you know existed in a very, very specific historical moment where you know it was possible to make films like this for the second channel in France.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: In in the period that I like her work the most, she's she's fruitfully torn between these two worlds, you know, because obviously they're shooting in 16mm, there's a kind of somewhat of a luxury element of the images when we look at them now, especially in what you might come compare with what could be made now.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: But things, you know, there's more of like um a grammar, a pre-existing grammar of that moment that is how filmmakers might approach, you know, an interview with Arafat or a film about the Iranian revolution or whatever.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like the grammar was there, and so Saab's struggle at that moment was to resist that, was to push against it, was to find ways to undercut it.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like once she starts to undercut it seriously, then I kind of lose interest a little bit.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: When there's this moment of high tension where where she's able to make things that both have a reportage quality and have kind of serious artistic interests.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And now I think that doesn't really exist in the same way, you know.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: If I if I can imagine some kind of uh division between, you know, filmmakers like Kamala Jafari and reporters.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's a huge, huge, huge gulf between those two things.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_09: Yeah, I think you can also like trace that, which to me is very interesting to think about.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_09: Uh and I see it happening also in other filmographies, facing out of the report, that's like as a cinematic format, which then creates this like shift towards like the purely television, which is kind of like the repercussions that we're currently living in, the live stream kind of like always online, always like uh recording kind of side of things, which is to me almost inherently digital, and then the more like uh I guess what remains boutique style of like 16mm recording, contemporary style, which draws more towards like the festival circuits and those kind of spaces, like that like middle ground was basically erased just by the like technical evolution of those things.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_09: And I see that actually also happen in in real time when you see like uh just in self-filmography.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_09: Uh once the reportage isn't really there, like as a state finance or television like station like finance format for her co-production, now like the fully like fictional, like the artifice and all those kind of elements to me can like make sense to be past the focus of her like filmmaking career, that sense, since there's the type of format that's no longer there in a sense.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: Voila.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: Last we prepared a film.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's two attaches.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: Once it's not grave because they're murs after two, and we are two vivid.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, I demand, you pose the question.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: The essential is to survive, to live.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's right that this means it's a tradition that it fits, that it's 150 ans of his work.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's my identity also.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's come for two months, it's the identity of two Libanis who are their maisons, their minds.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think the uh the Razor's Edge is more like a transition because we still get to see the images of destruction, or at least glimpses of them within the fabric of a fiction film.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: They kind of like uh protrude or like make way somehow in within the within the fiction.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: They're not very detached from the story because we have the protagonist Samar walking and like exploring these ruins.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: But I think maybe the po poetry of ruin or like how the way or the question of how to depict, how to include ruins, destruction, or the reality is a question that the film itself asks while in its making.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_09: Yeah, it's interesting because in a way you can kind of see in the Racer's Edge like that initial impulse, uh particularly with uh some like the character of Samaran, like her relationship to Egyptian Egyptian cinema in that film.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_09: I think basically what happens in Once Upon a Time in Beirut is kind of like an expansion of that, of like this ongoing way of like uh just an instant to like to find this correlation between like the escapism, quote unquote, of like the popular cinema at the time as some sort of like safe haven, like amidst uh like uh the don't go in the civil war and not like the the destruction around around here.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_09: In that film, in the Racer Change, I think it's like more like literally in the text of the film itself.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_09: To me, it kind of like suffers a little bit with a little bit of the same of what I was saying about like um uh Beirut My City, like like the war-torn, like uh West Beirut like part of it, which is present in the film, the ruins and this kind of exploration framed through these two like very like lyrical and pondering artist characters is perhaps on a register that fills, as you were saying, kind of this translational period.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_09: Whereas I guess like the sense of like artifice, which is very present in this film, is like fully has fully taken over once in once upon a time in Brewed.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_09: Just like the virtue of the views of montants and this kind of like insertions within the film.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like the images of destruction weren't as as uh saturated like the our minds or our at least the collective memory, collective uh perception wasn't as saturated as with images as now, so that the the gaps actually allowed these more fic the this the fiction to introduce itself to the to the to the landscape of ruins.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm also thinking of Rossellini, and I find these very singular moments in history where they were possible very interesting from a from a general uh audiovisual um culture.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean I think it's interesting to compare it with like the history of ruin films, if you if you can call it that, in in the way that you're describing, because I'm also thinking about I mean very different kinds of ruins for sure, but the films that were made in Germany right after the end of the war, um and also in Japan.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I'm thinking about, for example, films by Helmut Koitner in Germany, or um this amazing Mizuguchi film uh called uh Women of the Night from 1948.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: And in those films, there's like a clear impulse by these old school studio directors to take kind of the stuff of melodrama and set it in this world of ruin somehow.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas in The Razor's Edge, maybe because it's like the mid-80s, French co-production, I don't know, these characters are just um kind of floating signifiers, or I don't know what you would call it, like they're just clusters of affect rather than actual characters, as they would be in, you know, Mizaguchi or Koitner or these kinds of films.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in those films, like the the basic dramatic structure that they were working with didn't change, it just happened to be kind of transposed to this new context, and that new context created tension with it.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh whereas in the Razor's Edge, I mean the images of the ruins are incredible, but at its center is this kind of irresolute, sort of floaty, nothing, platonic romance between an older sort of artist who's struggling with his art and this young sort of free-spirited uh girl in the ruins.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh da da.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's just you know, it's the these aren't characters really, these are just kind of levers that you pull in in the context of a film like this.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's the tension that I feel in The Razor's Edge.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: But the dramatic side was lacking, you know, wasn't wasn't so well conceptualized.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: I agree with the painter and the Samar's uh interactions, but like for me, one of the most interesting scenes in the film is the with her friend, she's like uh mimicking or like play acting these dialogues in a very like a melodramatic register.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like that scene is so interesting, so um because we see them first where in a very close-up shot, so we don't see the background of where they are.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: So they just like like then like sing like in a very melodic way, like talk with each other.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a very I'm not very a big expert on Egyptian popular cinema, but they you can clearly see that they're like mimicking or play acting those dialogues, that type of dialogue.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then in them in a few moments she she shows the the the environment in which they are doing it, and it's a like a ruined amphitheater kind of uh construction.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: So those scenes to me were very, very uh powerful.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I also liked, as you said, of like a pure effect um within the frame, like Samar's presence is is like a is like a physical force.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: She's like a butterfly, like just like a uh skipping and walking in these uh ruins.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what I found more uh drawn in the film, like her physical presence, just navigating, exploring the what is what it is in the frame.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also, you know, I can connect it with some of the things that I really like about uh the earlier films as well, like for example, this film with Arafat on the boat, uh Batusu, Ship of Exile.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: She she almost understands on an intuitive level just how to film this guy sitting or leaning against the edge of the boat.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: So you just get to see Arafat in a way that's you know is beyond his kind of historical significance.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: You get to see him as a body, like you get to see the way his shirt is tucked into his pants, like you get to see the the way he looks at the other people, the way he interacts with kids, and so on and so on.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like she has this amazing instinctive ability for stuff like that, uh, particularly in those earlier films.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And in The Razor's Edge, which is definitely my favorite of her three fiction films that I've seen, she still has that, you know, but she's almost like wrestling with this desire to be more of a sort of good French filmmaker, in a way.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: I I find that difficult in the context of that film, but these moments that you're talking about are like these moments of like pure sensation almost that go beyond any kind of schematic imposition on what this film could be.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_09: To me, that's actually the main thing that I associate with like the moments I enjoy in her films and the kind of register I enjoy in her films, which to me are those like moments of levity that kind of ground her films to me, because they exist in this context which is like unescapable from her films, which like they're clearly like all can only exist in that like uh historical and like physical space.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_09: To me, those moments are purely cinematic if I want to create like a dichotomy, whereas like the older are more like on a writer, feel more like writerly, something that doesn't really translate to like the move, like the moving image to me.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_09: So they feel like I'm like superimposed to the film, whereas uh as Oiku was saying, like these moments where you just have like people moving and dancing, and you see like the then you open up the shot and you have like the space they're doing that.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_09: That to me is like pure cinematic because you only need like that transition and that like those images for in order to have that sense that that that like powerful evocation, whereas I don't need it to be like spelled out in that sense to me.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_09: Like the rarely effect to me, it's like a little bit overbearing at times.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_09: That is when you get like once upon a time in the route, like like late 80s and 90s, as well, okay, from it.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I I admire the artifice, but I think it in a in a pure formal aspect, that film is a mess.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's there's it lacks total uh sense of time, uh tempo, uh understanding of structure.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's just all over the place.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the film makes you feel that go and watch the films themselves rather than like pursuing and going on because it really lacks a to me, it lacks a logic, in inherent logic in the way these images are put together.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like as an essay film, I think it's a mess.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like, um, I don't think I I think it's my least favorite film of hers.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: Although I just want to like go uh make a like a beast mode and watch all the popular uh like a Arab cinema thanks to this film, but the film itself is just like what what is this?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean I feel a bit bad also for also this one and Dunya that you know those are films that I'm very much inclined to go as easy on as you can imagine, you know, like this is the outskirts podcast.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the though, you know, these kind of like UFOs of film history that are like a little bit badly made are kind of a lot of the time what we're interested in.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: But even on those terms, I mean it's just it's not good.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: You could you can feel the the thesis of the film very, very quickly, and then it just clobbers you over the head with that again and again and again without providing any real sort of levity or moments of invention, you know, like e even these moments between the two girls, which are like probably the best parts of the film, other than the clips, I guess that you're seeing, are just kind of just so underconceived in some way.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that it's it's really lacking some kind of formal interest to me, as well as all the things that you just uh that you just mentioned, you know, that it's a mess, that it's underdeveloped, and so on.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then when it was done, I was thinking, well, at least it's original, you know, at least it's like something, you know, that she made with her heart.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then I read that basically she just plundered the idea from this kind of festival favorite Machmo Bah film from the exact same moment.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think what annoys me the most is not the lack of originality but the w lack of structure to to to a subject that it r which clearly requires.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you uh set like set out to make a film about like uh about the film history of a c given country, you clearly need to have a sense of trajectory or a sense of reading that you should provide while like moving towards one from one period to another or from from one trope theme to another here I couldn't find that.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: It starts with obviously this type of vue lumière type of film then goes to to more melodrama melodrama type films and then goes back again to early sound films.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: So what what do we make of these different periods?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: How does they relate to each other?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: What they like the the historical or conceptual transitions between them were very poorly made I think that's that's what I found found frustrating.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_09: I feel like the experience watching the film isn't as interesting as discussing what the film is in a way but I guess in my case just like the there's some textural pleasure of like saying this clumsy amateurish kind of like in insertion into these films.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_09: And as a second perhaps like just cherishing like the almost like mixtape aspect of the film itself kind of like almost in a musicality sense of what it's doing.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_09: Like it doesn't really flow as you were saying like cinematically in that sense.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_09: To me there's like a novelty there which isn't I don't think novelty is like a good thing to say about the film because novelty wors off very quickly but in this film at least like there's like a good like 65 minutes there which I think yeah it's pretty fun and the film is like 104 minutes there.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: I do find some levity uh um and in opposition to what Chris was saying uh when the characters are kind of like having this back and forth uh with Monsieur Farouk and particularly in the earlier scenes of the film which is very almost overly whimsical to me but I kind of appreciate that in almost in a jarring sense environment because that younger character is supposed to have this more I don't want to say like necessarily militant but they're like in this search of like the truth in the image whereas you have like this romanticized figure in Monsieur Farouk that's kind of like uh engulfed in the myth making of the of the cinema of cinema so it's like so some interesting things there I think in terms of like the the contraposition of the characters but clearly that's not really explored in the film that much so you only get like glimpses of what can be to me the the problem really is the the clips themselves you know which which is like that she's not doing anything with them you know that they that they that there's no at some point especially over 100 minutes you know at some point it's like okay what are you what are you looking for here and I was thinking trying to think of kind of films that use snippets of films in a way that could be like remotely connected to this and I saw a lot of people online you know joke that this is kind of like Justin Sabs Histoire de cinema but really the actually the Godard film that sort of makes me think about is this one from 2006 called Vrai faux passeport and he just takes scenes from films that he's interested in including the brown bunny actually and he just like puts them together and between each of them it either says vrai, faux or passeport and at the first you start to like understand the sort of rhythm to which one is like vrai and which one is faux and passeport is not totally clear.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: But then like he starts to play with that and you start to like see the uh Rossellini's open city as faux and so on.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: So there's like a kind of a tension there but it's like very very hands-off film it's not like good art as usual use of you know images blending into one another so you know there's almost that but even within that framework it's like well why are we watching this entire scene?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know it uh it's almost like a jarring pro moment because you you just see a kind of nakedness that I think is not really flattering to the overall body of work.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think you can very well like highlight or like pinpoint these moments of flatness that those product productions create and bring out the tensions or bring out the the what the photogenie or the specific personal connection to the city that a person from Beirut can have.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's what lacks here that we don't see that put in the front of of the the the the it's very flat and very opaque.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_09: Yeah I thought accidentally almost in uh La Telenovela Rante the Real Reason but it is a Mento film.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_09: It's very different films because in that film they aren't using like existing like filming material.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_09: They're kind of like recreating like a sense of style of like soap like a Chilean soap operas.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_09: But in that sense it kind of feels like in the case of Once Uptime we wrote like accidental like a zap into television in the sense of like how it flows from one to the other at this kind of like additive effect of uh just like flowing through like in this erratic sense through history.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_09: And also in that sense also I think that Novelante has this kind of tension again like well a little bit more like upfront of like this contrasting assumption of like uh what is the reality in that case of Chilean reality not existing and then this purely uh quote unquote uh romanticized and magical realm in this case of television and then you have like uh the the copper cinema there.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_05: So I think there's something there also in the case of that film not really translating I think that well to other contexts you won't know we've been kidnapping I was known with the guy and it's bizarre I remember Beirut and ridicule Monsieur Farouzha was a little bit more monsieur with the colour of colour monsieur Faluba remplied I think we've long been interested in periods of filmmakers careers where they're sort of um in the doldrums and they're just like making these oddities like in a very weird moments of their career.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you know in a way Saab is kind of the ultimate example of this because she's someone who made films all of her most famous films are made in a very very specific milieu and with very very specific production context literally inside a very specific civil war almost like it kind of maps almost exactly onto the period of that civil war in Lebanon her body of work has a unity in that sense that at the end of the civil war basically vanishes and you end up with a few of these kind of oddities uh like once upon a time in Beirut is almost like the firing the starting gun because it's like okay civil war is over and we're gonna just make this like completely odd sort of clip comedy but then yeah with for like the rest of her career I mean I've only seen Dunya which we'll talk about now but there are a few other films but I think they're all kind of scattered very very scattered in their approach.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also you know what what we're not seeing when we're just look glancing at the filmography here is that I think at this point if I understood correctly I think she found it a film festival uh she was working on gallery installations she was doing a lot of other things so I think clearly the the kind of prolificness of that earlier period was gone and probably this randomness that we're seeing was just the product of a very weird moment in her life you go from these kind of luxurious images to these shabby looking ones.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_09: Some way I found in the position of being the the Dunia and the late style just anything apologist I guess if there's such thing but yeah I guess in the case of Dunia which uh just to give a preface is uh focused essentially on the figure of uh Hanan Turk which is like a very famous like Egyptian uh like the dancer and like uh performer I think Malay was mostly what she was uh focused on and then the film is this kind of like very oh uh to me it has like this soap opera feel and texture which is the main thing that you probably can guess is why I like the film it's like uh a little bit more than well a lot more than you guys I think but like narratively is straight out like pure like melodrama in the roughest sense that is kind of like erratic uh there's like this student of Arabic poetry that falls in love with like uh this man who's like very conservative and like disapproves that uh woman shouldn't dance and move her body like that that's like uh heretical and all these things of like the the patriarchal state of society which isn't really uh developing with any sort of like uh nuance it's like every character is very archetypical in that sense but just that that almost like raw element of how the film flows um again like also like the low production value uh which almost like straight to TV kind of feel of the film to me kind of allows that register of uh what the film's doing to work for me which kind of kind of like distances itself from more like of the previous uh working film filmography and to make sense it's almost like something that will be shown like on TV and have this something like I show my mom in a way like oh look uh mom there's like a female liberation film with Hanan Turk which I think like might be what she was aiming for.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_09: There's a relationship here I think with the his with the history of Egyptian cinema that keeps appearing in her films.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_09: I don't know if that was precisely the attempt here but it does feel like if this film was made like 50 years prior perhaps it would be like a different kind of film that was more aligned in the sort of industrial like uh complex of of like um particular like Egyptian filmmaking then it'd be like better suited for that but it's kind of exists in this like weird middle ground in the 2000s which I guess to me is why I see some value in it although I I understand it has like a lot of like limitations and I'll say like the film is jarring to see well for more in many sense.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm a Dunya apologist I like I like Dunya I mean what do you hate fun Chris I mean maybe I can say about about Dunya like since you mentioned um Anan Turk I think it's kind of interesting to see how if you look online if you look on letterbox places like that Dunya is pretty highly ranked in the Jocelyn Saab filmography in terms of the stuff that people return to but if you look at a lot of what's written about Dunya you know even on Letterboxd reviews you see the people ain't there for Jocelyne Saab you know that it it's it it's a it's a UFO in the filmography of Jocelyne Saab but maybe it's not a UFO in the context of you know Egyptian cinema of 2005 you know and I think that's the way the people watching it so almost like coming to it through Saab is almost like this ridiculous exercise.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know it's like there's a certain thing with low budgets that you you do see filmmakers that we love who fall on tough times and have to make you know films for the Disney Channel or for TV or whatever it may be.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so you get to see almost their sensibility tested by low resources or an alien context or a very kind of mismatched subject and some of those filmmakers have a strong enough sensibility to survive that and others don't and for me in this case Justin Stubb really doesn't on a most elemental level like she just doesn't know how to cut together scenes you know they're just like conversational scenes or scenes in the street that are just like so badly shot you know so badly edited and not in a way that I find interesting.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: If you change your viewing experience to like like focus more on those scenes I think there are very fascinating moments of of uh touch of colours of the the very primitive facial and bodily expressions that I found very Alonso is like nodding in a very uh enthusiastic way so yay and uh yeah like the like the Jack Nicholson meme like I mean this is there's the ones also the gender politics of this film is very all over the place like just no you can say that again fuck me holy shit this is like one of the most famous feminist filmmakers of the 70s and 80s and this is what she made oh my god yeah exactly and I mean there's a clearly she I mean that that's maybe the problem she she clearly wants to make a statement with a capital S about like uh female empowerment the the control of the body the female female circumcision and it's clearly uh important stopplot in the film which is codal totally out of tone of what's going on in Dunyan's sexual life and but at the same time I love how like older like middle aged female characters of films are very sexually active and I like watching those those characters like because I think they're not like they're not they I felt that they're not faking it like I found them more genuine than Dunya herself I like the tack the taxi driver lady um I like the the the other woman the professor that have like a very passionate sex with like I like those women I like I love them seeing on the screen I like when she goes to like take belly dancing classes from the her mother's uh friends and they like dress her in a very shiny red dress and they just like they don't even teach her anything they just like dance to me I I loved watching those scenes but I can't like intellectualize or like bring a logic to that because there's no logic as you said but it's it's very pure nostalgic feeling um that I would probably have feel if I watch a Turkish film from the the same period like 2006.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_09: To me this film has uh two different levels of Mexican logic one of them being I know how familiar are you with La Rosa Guadalupe which is what perhaps the more memeed like Mexican telenovela ever.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_09: You've probably seen clips of it but it also has this thing which is like just like melodramatic uh like meme plot but randomly those like these current events kind of like subplot in those in those episodes where it's like this famous episode about like kids being emo and like about like suicides and like assistant deaths and things like that.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_09: Which is kind of like how this film tackles this like uh like famous circumcision subplot which I have to say just like that having that reference to me is kind of like yeah it kind of works in the similar way.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_09: And the other level which you're kind of ralling to also Oiku was like to me this film more than I just an Ipsa film works to me in how I watch Santo films which is this like the author I found here is Hanan Turk and I find like her dancing sequences to be like similar to those like like mid to late Santos Santo films where they only show like these inserts of like Santo fighting for people are there that's where people are there just like to say Santo fighting.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_09: People are seeing this film because oh Hanan Turk I want to see her dance and the film is like well yeah you'll get through quickly this like dialogue scenes until we get to a real thing.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_09: So in a way it has this kind of like pornographic logic in a way in a sense not not dealing with the sexuality itself but dealing with this transactional utilitarian way of using the film to showcase this figure this popular figure figure that kind of transcends any Otro style and to me there's like always this interesting engagement with that with that truly heroic work from both of you though which you haven't seen what's going on right yeah what's going on is kind of like has kind of this very ambitious high concept like writerly element as well that I was kind of complaining about in like the 80s films.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_09: Or in this case it's like kind of creating this kind of city symphony over your route export to these different characters you can see Chris just like I can already see it.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_09: I mean any film from like the the 2000s that has a question mark in the title and it's low budget like this it's like usually yeah you I can imagine what these kind of films are gonna be so essentially it's kind of this um collection of like intersecting stories and this kind of like city style kind of like um like a choral way of filmmaking which you have like these different female characters having different like their initiation towards like uh affection their like sexual awakening all this like very esoteric and not really developed but they have like female soul comes from the a writer that's kind of doing this like very like ornate and like overridden like voiceover which is very cringy as well.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_09: But since the register of those sequences is kind of like similar to Dunia I had like a lot of pleasure watching it.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_09: And uh the reason I saw this film also was like Costa Rican Link which this film uh stars well one of the like actress in the film is the star Jacutieres which is like a Costa Rican well Iraqi Costa Rican filmmaker also like a multidisciplinary artist and she dances in the film and there's a lot of dancing in this film as well uh it's basically essentially continues this project around like female like bodily expression and it's even more esoteric than Dunia that has barely has this plot uh but as a collection this like additive element of like poor poorly shot sequences uh of just like uh I guess that thing is like the over the overwritten dialogue and voiceover in this film gets to almost like a parodical degree which I think m benefits the material in a way which because then I it doesn't create tension it's just like part of the similar like tonal uh habitat of the film.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah there's something in there in in in in those like late 2000 films in just like their erratic nature and like what it's showing of like the material reality of like uh this kind of author dealing with popul like being not dealing with being pushed towards popular cinema is the only way to really create something which I found appealing I'll say I mean it is interesting because you know a a lot of the cases that we we talk about these kinds of career arcs like now now that we're talking about it I'm thinking about uh joan machine silver um but I think unfortunately we didn't really watch any of those very late films from her but you know in John McClellan Silver's case she was always making dramatic films and she's a was a filmmaker who was very much interested in characterization narrative structure and so on whereas Saab wasn't making those films for the vast majority of her career and then in the 90s was just kind of thrust into that world and I I personally just don't know enough about the background of that like how that happened but it's almost like she's miscast in some way you know like she's not like sh why why should she direct a film like Dunya you know like I almost feel maybe maybe this just the put side of her personality I'm just not aware of you know maybe maybe this was like kind of a passion project for her but it almost like it almost calls for someone who I think has a better appreciation of like tackiness but also characterization, structure, things like that, even on a very kind of superficial level even on a kind of soap opera level.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: But to me it's just like kind of clashing all these elements clashing together in a way that I don't particularly find um fruitful.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Having said that like after you both you know did did your best to convince me there I really do wonder if like approaching this film through a Hanantuk episode could yield more fruitful results.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: Possibly and basically in this period that we've just been talking about slash shitting on um she you know this like making films was kind of just a small part of what she was doing.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean she was really involved in uh photography which was always an interest of hers.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was from the very beginning something she was passionate about.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: And also doing video installations.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: So she did some some big ones around the world during this period um she also founded this kind of film festival in Lebanon which was kind of explicitly um I think it was called the Cultural Resistance Film Festival so it was kind of explicitly following some of these threads that um that we've discussed.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: And also she was herself from what I understand involved in a kind of archival project um at the Lebanese Cinematech or what what was they were hoping to be a Lebanese cinemate cataloguing films, organizing retrospectives and so on also in Paris, also in Beirut.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you know during this period where there's just these oddities popping up in her filmography she was doing a more kind of purposeful work.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: So basically after she died there was this kind of renaissance in restoration of her work.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of what we've seen In this past week, you know, is part of this interesting sub project to kind of restore and revive those films.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: Also in a moment that's like particularly um ripe for it, let's say.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: We were talking about the reportages that after the more I think the focus, like thanks to this digital archives and availability of a lot of materials, but also people's focus shifting uh on Palestine and Lebanon.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think her work also like benefited a lot from this rediscovery, like a political rediscovery of films uh from her early reportages.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: But there was also the restoration of the Razor's Edge by several features contributed to a lot of more established reconnaissance.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I think Mohammed Yaqubi, which I like his archival work a lot, about the um about the the he's an archive like he's a filmmaker from um Palestine and he works a lot with the archives, and he was also involved with the the restoration and the preservation of her work.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was looking yesterday at the the page for uh Doc Lisboa's retrospective of Jocelyn Saab, uh which they did just after she died, and and what I see now is that there were a lot of films shown there that are really still unknown, that actually aren't even on letterboxes as I can see.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, her very first kind of um films I guess she made in um the context of the French television or the the the the uh yeah, the French television work that she was doing at the time.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: So interviews with uh Gaddafi, um with uh Israeli um generals, uh in Egypt, in Kurdistan, in Syria, uh and this is all before uh Palestinian women, which is kind of you know sort of the official start of a career, let's say.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's I mean, quite literally a lot left to discover, and I really hope that I can dig into those th films at some point.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, if I can say more positive words about Justin Saab after this uh kind of ignominious end, is that like I personally am very happy that she was the one making these films at that time.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like that that that's a bit of a historical miracle to me.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these kinds of films, uh conversations with Gaddafi, conversations with Yassa Arafat.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad she was the one having those conversations and structuring them because she somehow at that moment had exactly the right uh sensibility to do so.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like the note that we end basically all these podcasts on, but uh I really hope to keep watching.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, what have you been watching uh other than Jocelyn Saab?
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean other than that, I've just been working on this text um for Metrograph because they're showing this very interesting Czech film from the 60s called Long Live the Republic.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh directed by Karel Kachina, who's kind of one of the most interesting directors of that period.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's kind of a pre-New Wave director who gets lumped in with the New Wave a lot.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: And he's a bit too arty for my tastes in the 60s, and uh Long Did of the Republic comes directly before that period, so it's this kind of like lost gem of that period because it has one foot in the sort of frenetic style of the new wave, but it's sort of more kind of restrained and classical in some sense.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I really hope that people check that out when it comes to Metrograph and obviously read my text.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: What about you guys?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_09: I just talked about this like random film I did uh so earlier this month, which is kind of a division film called Somewhere in My Veins, recorded in uh like CD TV by some sort of like privileged like um Indian student, but it's basically about his it's kind of like the most 1999 film ever.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_09: Uh, and it wasn't really meant to be shown in other contexts, it's essentially like a like almost like a home video, but it's basically how he's like documenting like his struggles, like present like uh like uh coming out in as a as a gay man to like his mother in the United States.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_09: So it's a lot of like shows shows of him going to gay clubs in like uh like East Coast, uh United States, and just like asking someone to record him, like pondering and like the club music playing.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_09: Um it's pretty fun in that way.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_09: But I mean very amateurish, very like uh film school style, like editing, but I find enduring.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_09: To me, the most interesting thing is that there's like a much cinema from like late 90s, like 2000s, so just the textural effect it works differently.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_09: It's also saying like that same thing being done nowadays, and also the fact that it's like a 40 that the some of my brain is like a 41-minute film.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_09: So also it's kind of the whole structure, it has this kind of like uh has a at the end of the film, which I was thinking to why was in the film, has like a thank thank you note to Ross McAlwee, which totally makes sense because the film is clearly like working towards some sort of like um German's march, kind of like aspiration in what it's doing, about like a film that starts bringing out something and then turns into an affective memory, or done by like a overly ambitious like uh grad student.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_09: I don't know, there's there's something something in there like I think uh is workable.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_09: What about you?
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_09: Like you Oh, you were at the mech cat.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I guys, you can't imagine.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was I was dead, I was dying, I was so frustrated.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like to the point which um this was the day before the end of the festival, and they already started the reruns, and I mean Minotaur was one of the favorites of the festival.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_02: It fucking won the Grand Prix.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I went to the screening like 30 minutes after I was like, I don't want to watch this film, like at this moment, I don't care like if it wins Palme d'Or.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: I just don't want to watch this film and I don't want to write about this film.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: I just didn't feel like it.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_02: And the the rhythm of film festivals are so annoying and so imposing that people while not watching while not wanting to watch films, they watch films, and it's so frustrating because you have a limited brain capacity, you have a limited like a source of appreciation, source of criticism towards a film.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: And and and I think if you know your own limits, you should you should just not try exceeding them.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: Just beat like watch one film per day, two films per day.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: Why are we watching so many films?
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like I want to be I want to fall in love with a film, I want to like uh get angry with a film towards a film.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's a personal thing to me.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I get very excited when something's like excites me, and I get like just like crazy and want to talk about it like day for days, but otherwise I just get very sad if a film is bad.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because I want to love or like have like personal beef with a film.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: And if it's like a mediocre one, that's the worst.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: Because you just get exposed to these like a middle ground films that you don't feel either like a vivid anger nor uh like a very rapturous affection.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: Just middle.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's like meh.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_02: But I just want to mention one film that's like made like there are three or four films that made this festival worth going or like worth uh like I will remember the festival through these films is uh Arthur Harari's the Unknown.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of people hated it too, like it was a quite a differ divisive film.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: But I just kept thinking about it, or the the doors that opened to me through its own topic was a lot, so I I I will definitely go back and watch it again.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: But it's just about this very specific idea about bodyswap, because it's adapted from a comic book that Arthur Harari and his brother Lucas Harari wrote, and I think I don't remember if the what the brother like um draw, but maybe it's some uh an illustrator and a different illustrator, but it's basically about a man, a photographer called David Zimmerman, who um has sex with a woman and wakes up in her body the next day.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_02: But when he in her the the woman's body tries to find her, the the level of um belief in identity shifts drastically.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it's not a spoiler, but the identity itself that uh she he assumed of her is not real either.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_02: So it creates this like um abyss of uh identity terror.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like who are like who are you?
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: Who are the people you're interacting it with?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_02: Where does the identity uh start in in a physical body, whether whether is it in a physical body or in the mind?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: These questions like put me in such a very put me in such a disorienting and disturbing space that I just kept thinking about like I the film is very inspired by the Antonioni uh uh gaze.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's a part of rivet in that.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_02: It starts quite like the Matrix uh like the first Matrix scene when he goes to a club and some he's offered by like a pill.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like there there are some s very generous cinephile references in it, but I think it still manages to like achieve a idiosyncratic tone and and uh feeling.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I'm I'm I'm excited to go back and watch it again.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you very much for listening.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: That was our Jocelyn Saab episode.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: Next week we will be talking about the the movement, the cycle, the period of film history known as Nikatsu Roman Porno.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going back to Japan.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: As per usual, you can send us any abuse.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: I can imagine after this episode there could be some.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, to well, abuse or positive notes, all questions, or anything that you want us to read on the air, because at this point we will basically read anything on the air if you send it, uh, to outskirts filmmagazine at gmail.com.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we will see you in two Thursdays.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.