Beirut
NADINE, THE YOUNG narrator of the documentary Beirut Diaries: Truth, Lies and Videotape, stares out from posters plastered throughout my Beirut neighborhood. She gazes off into the distance with a faint, optimistic smile. Presumably, she is looking at a city very different from today’s Beirut. Last week marked the beginning of what Hezbollah calls the “final phase” of its anti-government protests. Long lines of burning tires blocked the road to the airport, and rock-throwing protesters clashed with soldiers. Three people were killed, and dozens more were injured, in an echo of the country’s horrific civil war.
Beirut Diaries, directed by filmmaker Mai Masri, chronicles Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution. Masri funded the film herself, and it is currently making the rounds through film festivals throughout the Arab world. When I spoke to Masri about her reasons for choosing this subject, she spoke of the importance of mass movements in a region where civic expression is often repressed. “I think it’s very positive when people express themselves,” she said, “that’s democracy.”
