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Lebanon – Frontline Club http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com Championing Independent Journalism Tue, 24 May 2016 12:45:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Holy Lands: Sectarianism in the Middle East http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/holy-lands-sectarianism-in-the-middle-east/ http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/holy-lands-sectarianism-in-the-middle-east/#respond Fri, 08 Apr 2016 15:42:28 +0000 http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/?p=56695 The Economist's Jerusalem correspondent Nicolas Pelham and others to discuss the roots of sectarian violence - as well as hopes for recovery from conflict and a return to plurality. ]]> Sectarian divides – and their manipulation by those in power – are increasingly fuelling conflict across the diverse countries of the Middle East, spilling over borders and contributing to ongoing violence in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. Yet in the nineteenth century the region was considerably more tolerant than Western Europe at the time; a high degree of religious pluralism and self-determination were permitted across the Ottoman Empire’s wide-reaching territories. After European powers forcibly broke up the empire and attempted to divide it into secular nation-states, the foundations were arguably laid for the conflicts of today.

On the release of his new book Holy Lands: Reviving Pluralism in the Middle East, we will be joined by writer and Jerusalem correspondent for The Economist Nicolas Pelham – and others – to discuss his optimistic and vivid reportage that spans the region, from Israel and Palestine to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. We will discuss the roots of today’s sectarian tensions and how they have come to characterise the region as a whole – often without a full recognition of historical context, socio-economic factors, or the rich differences of the countries contained within it. We will look to the future and assess hope for a recovery from conflict and a return to religious plurality.

This event will be chaired by Iraqi-British journalist and political analyst Mina Al-Oraibi, a senior fellow at the Institute of State Effectiveness and a Yale World Fellow. She is a member of the Global Agenda Council on the Middle East and has written extensively on US and European policies in the Middle East, in addition to conducting several high profile interviews including with US President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi.

The panel:

Nicolas Pelham is The Economist’s Middle East correspondent, and a writer on Arab affairs for the New York Review of Books. He spent five years as a senior analyst for International Crisis Group, covering the growing power of regional national-religious movements in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine, and has worked as a consultant for the United Nations in Gaza. He was The Economist’s correspondent in Iraq during the 2003 American invasion and in the Maghreb. He is the author of A New Muslim Order (2008), which maps Shia resurgence in the Arab world, and co-author of A History of the Middle East (2004).

Patrick Cockburn is an Irish journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent since 1979 for the Financial Times and, currently, for The Independent. He was awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year at the 2013 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, and is the author of several books on Iraq’s recent history, including The Occupation: War and Resistance in IraqMuqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq and most recently The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising.

Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi Arabian journalist and filmmaker, and joint winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism. She has been reporting on Yemen since 2010, and was one of only a handful of journalists reporting from inside the country for a Western news organisation as the crisis escalated. She has directed numerous documentaries for the BBC and PBS, including Al Qaeda in Yemen: A New Front (2012), Saudi’s Secret Uprising 2014), and more recently, Yemen Under Siege (2016).

Firas Abi Ali is a Senior Principal Analyst for IHS Country Risk, with a focus on forecasting political and violent risks in the MENA region. His expertise includes Islamic finance in Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Egypt, with a concentration on political stability and the rise of Islamist militant groups, as well as the likely evolution of conflicts and ensuing risks across the region. He makes regular appearances in the media, including interviews with Reuters, Bloomberg, the BBC, Newsweek and CNN.

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Screening – This is Exile: Diaries of Child Refugees + Q&A http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/screening-this-is-exile-diaries-of-child-refugees-qa/ http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/screening-this-is-exile-diaries-of-child-refugees-qa/#respond Tue, 02 Feb 2016 12:36:33 +0000 http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/?p=55518 Mani Benchelah. Over the course of a year, Emmy Award-winning director Mani Benchelah made this intimate portrait of Syrian refugee children forced to flee from the violence of civil war to neighbouring Lebanon. It tells the stories of the children’s lives in their own words and captures the moving truth of how they deal with loss, hardship and dashed hopes. ]]> This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Mani Benchelah and Jess Crombie, Deputy Director of Creative at Save the Children; moderated by filmmaker and journalist Julia Kirby-Smith.

Over the course of a year, Emmy Award-winning director Mani Yassir Benchelah made this intimate portrait of Syrian refugee children forced to flee from the violence of civil war to neighbouring Lebanon. Funded by friends of Save the Children, the film tells the stories of the children’s lives in their own words and captures the moving truth of how they deal with loss, hardship and dashed hopes.

While her younger brother fetches water, Aya talks about how a soldier pressured her to provide information about her father. Little Nouredine lived through the siege of Homs and, stuttering, explains how he believes that President Assad’s soldiers are following him everywhere. Thirteen-year-old Layim harbors feelings of vengeance, although he actually likes nothing better than to help people, for example by handing out rations.

Nearly all the children look forward to returning home one day, but Fatima, who is disabled, is thriving in Switzerland where she feels fully acknowledged for the first time. Mustafa desperately wants to study, but he has to work to support his family. Through the prism of their testimony, we gain perspective on the fate of millions of Syrian refugees, half of whom are children.

Speakers:

Julia Kirby-Smith is a filmmaker and journalist with a special interest in social impact and digital engagement. She has worked on Channel 4 News, Dispatches and various current affairs series, as well as being Managing Editor of digital journalism agency Newzulu and running the Asia office of indie Make Productions. She now runs her own comms and video production company, Make Waves.

Jess Crombie heads a team of filmmakers, photographers, picture editors, designers and writers who shoot, craft and create all kinds of powerful, effective and award winning communications materials for Save the Children. Previous to Save the Children Jess was at WaterAid, travelling the globe producing all of their overseas shoots; Magnum Photos, heading up their Creative unit; and almost ten years in advertising as a shoot producer for Wyatt-Clarke & Jones and Publicis advertising agency amongst others. Jess has an academic background in representation theory and lectures at LCC on this and other areas.

Directed by: Mani Benchelah
Produced by: Charly Feldman for MAKE Productions
Runtime: 56′
Country: United Kingdom/Lebanon/Switzerland

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Gordon Brown, Julia Gillard & Kevin Watkins Discuss Funding Education for Syrian Child Refugees http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/gordon-brown-julia-gillard-kevin-watkins-discuss-funding-education-for-syrian-child-refugees/ http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/gordon-brown-julia-gillard-kevin-watkins-discuss-funding-education-for-syrian-child-refugees/#respond Tue, 26 Jan 2016 16:14:40 +0000 http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/?p=55376 By Charlotte Beale

United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown joined chair of the Global Partnership for Education and former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Overseas Development Institute’s Executive Director Kevin Watkins at the Frontline Club on 25 January 2016 to discuss Funding for Syrian Child Refugees, on a panel moderated by foreign correspondent David Loyn.

The panel discussed the aim of the new UN International Commission on Financing Global Education, chaired by Brown, to provide one million school places for Syrian refugee children in neighbouring countries, as well as the wider challenge of educating refugees globally. The Frontline event took place ten days ahead of a major UN-sponsored Syrian relief conference in London.

“At our current rates of change,” said Gillard, “it won’t be until 2111 that the world first sees a generation of sub-Saharan African girls who universally have a primary and lower secondary education. That means no one in this room will live to see it. It’s too long to wait.”

Since 2010, the enrolment of Syrian refugee children in regional schools has increased from 60,000 to 200,000, “largely down to the advocacy work that Gordon has done,” said Watkins.

“It has both demonstrated what is possible, and allows us to hang our heads in shame at what we’ve allowed to happen. It’s taken an entire primary school generation to stop us sitting on our hands,” Watkins continued.

Many of the school places found for the refugees are in “double shift” schools. Existing schools double the number of students that can learn by running the same programme twice in one day. Typically, the existing students join one shift and the refugee children join another.

“Four years ago, an average Syrian child had the same prospects of getting through primary school as a kid in a high-performing middle income country like Thailand,” said Watkins. “In the space of a single generation, they’ve gone to education indicators close to Sierra Leone and South Sudan. You can see these consequences on streets across the region – there’s an epidemic of child labour. They’re forced into labour markets and early marriage.”

Watkins quoted from Graça Machel’s 1996 report on children in conflict: “It’s difficult to imagine greater depths to which humanity can sink when you look at the violation of rights and freedoms of children in conflict.”

“Half the children who are out of school in the world are in conflict zones,” said Brown. “It’s now said it is safer to be a soldier in a conflict zone than to be a girl because of the risk of child marriage, child trafficking and child labour.”

Gillard emphasised that increasing education for refugee children isn’t just about more school places, but about raising the quality of the education the children receive.

While there are “121 million children of primary and lower secondary age out of school” in the world, she said, there are “250 million who get access to some schooling… but still can’t do most basic literacy and numeracy tasks.”

“Is there a great deal of point in having kids go and sit in this thing called a school if they aren’t learning? In many countries where we’re trying to improve education systems, there are nowhere near enough trained teachers. It requires us to think how… to deliver education in a systemised way. We’re thinking about some breakthrough models that can be scaled up and rolled out in some of the poorest places on earth.”

Brown said: “it is almost ridiculous to think that when you’re in desperate need, it’s only the public sector who’s going to contribute. We need foundations, we need charities, philanthropists, businesses to make their contribution to humanitarian aid.

“We need to find other governments who are prepared to take this up. Both Julia and I tried to make our governments pro-education in the global development sphere, but we need more governments to take up the cause, and we need to find philanthropists and foundations. People are prepared to give to education in their own country, but when it comes to global education – very little.”

Audience member Dr Mairead Collins from Christian Aid raised concerns of families in Lebanon that the late timetables in double shift schools prevented them allowing their daughters to go to school in the dark, for safety reasons. How does the commission address these obstacles, she asked?

“Safe transport to schools is a well-understood problem,” said Brown, and money will be directed towards it. “Safe schools are a very important concept now,” he said. “We have assumed schools are safe havens without doing anything about it. But you’ve got to make the schools safe.”

Gillard agreed, saying “overwhelmingly, funds for education come from domestic governments, and for many domestic governments, until they’ve got robust taxation systems you’re always going to be running behind the curve.”

Augustus Della-Porta, trustee of Educate a Child International, said he has an eight-year-old niece in the besieged town of Yarmouk in Syria who has never been to school. What about education for the children still in Syria?

Chris Gunness, spokesman for UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said children in Palestine often tell him that they hear education offers hope – but there is no political situation in which this hope can be realised. “In Gaza, there’s 44% unemployment”, Gunness said, “and in Lebanon, Palestinians are banned from more than 100 professions. What does it mean to have education in the absence of a political process?”, he asked.

“Education isn’t the solution for every problem,” said Gillard, but “it’s hard to imagine a problem that isn’t advantaged by the benefits that education brings.”

“If people are educated, there is more capacity to negotiate differences and find solutions to conflict, to look for peace and stability, and to build institutional government systems.”

Brown said there are “new proposals for economic zones in these countries so that people denied the chance to work as refugees are finally given a chance to work within economic zones. The World Bank is now involved in Jordan and Lebanon, and I think will be involved in Turkey… [These proposals] will prevent a lot of child labour. Because [at present] children become the only income earners.”

“Despite the failure of the political process, we cannot leave these children without an education,” Brown said.

“We cannot allow them to become not just a lost generation, but a discontented and dispossessed generation, with all the implications that 200 million young people growing up in the Middle East have for the security of that region and the rest of the world.”

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Yallah!: Underground Music in the Middle East http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/yallah-underground-music-in-the-middle-east/ http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/yallah-underground-music-in-the-middle-east/#respond Tue, 17 Nov 2015 12:40:15 +0000 http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/?p=54424 By Ratha Lehall

On Monday 16 November, the Frontline Club hosted a screening of the documentary Yallah! Underground, a vibrant look at a diverse groups of Arab artists and musicians using culture to challenge the status quo. The film is set in the years prior to and during the Arab spring, and focuses on artists from Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. The film was followed by a Q&A with director Farid Eslam, via Skype.

The film puts its soundtrack at the forefront, and uses music to weave its way through different Arab cities, swiftly moving its focus between the individual artists’ discussions over the struggle between individuality and tradition. Freedom of expression and thought are common themes that are mentioned regularly, particularly in relation to the events of Tahrir Square in Egypt.

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Eslam had spent a lot of time in the Middle East, mostly filming on commercial projects, and explained that his motivation for this project came from the desire to provide a different presentation of Arabs. He commented that Western perspective often sees Arabs being “closely connected to violence, frustration, aggression, which is only a fraction of the reality.”

“Most people want the same thing all over the world: to live in peace, freedom and to raise their families. It’s important to remind people and ourselves from time to time that we’re talking about just normal people, and it’s sad that we live in a time where we actually have to be reminded of this simple fact and simple truth.”

One audience member was curious about the absence of Syria from the film, considering its presence of underground artists. Eslam explained that he was keen to include Syria, and had tried to feature artists in Damascus and Jeddah. However, due to the escalation of the situation, “it became impossible.” Eslam did manage to film some Syrian artists in the Golan Heights, but this was not included in the film.

Eslam explained that he was able to film such a diverse group of people partly due to limited and sporadic funding, but also due to a large network of artists to draw from. Most of the artists filmed did not make it into the film; the total footage for the project was extensive, and probably enough to “make five more films.”


He found it very easy to meet artists: “Basically, you meet one artist and he points you to ten new ones.”

While a lot of his research was carried out on social media, he was also able to spend a lot of time talking directly to artists and people connected with the alternative scene.

Information about Yallah! Underground can be found on the film’s website and Facebook page. Yallah! Underground will have its first screening in an Arab country next month in Dubai.

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Screening: Yallah! Underground + Q&A http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/screening-yallah-underground-qa/ http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/screening-yallah-underground-qa/#respond Mon, 28 Sep 2015 16:59:24 +0000 http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/?p=53109 Farid Eslam via Skype. From the early days of the Arab Spring that sparked hopes for change to the years of instability and political tension that followed, this enthralling documentary follows the stories of young prominent underground artists from across the Middle East during the period of 2009 to 2013.]]> This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Farid Eslam via Skype.

From the early days of the Arab Spring that sparked hopes for change to the years of instability and political tension that followed, this enthralling documentary follows the stories of young prominent underground artists from across the Middle East during the period of 2009 to 2013.

In a region fraught with political tension, these progressive musicians and artists have struggled for years to express themselves freely and to promote more liberal attitudes within their societies.

From young female artists in Egypt overturning the norms by living alone, to the persecution of a famous Lebanese musician for singing against the political leader, director Farid Eslam paints a picture of a new generation challenging both old and new realities with passion and admirable perseverance.

Directed by: Farid Eslam
Runtime: 84′
Year: 2015
Country: Czech Republic, Germany, UK, Egypt, Canada, US
Languages: English, Arabic

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Screening: A Syrian Love Story + Q&A http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/screening-a-syrian-love-story-qa/ http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/screening-a-syrian-love-story-qa/#respond Mon, 17 Aug 2015 11:43:26 +0000 http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/?p=51278 Sean McAllister. Amer, 45, met Raghda, 40, in a Syrian prison cell 15 years ago. Over months they communicated through a tiny hole they’d secretly made in the wall. They fell in love and when released, married and started a family together. This film tells the poignant story of their family torn apart by the tyrannical Assad dictatorship.]]> This screening will be followed by a panel discussion with director Sean McAllister, protagonist Amer Daoud, and journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
 

 

Amer, 45, met Raghda, 40, in a Syrian prison cell 15 years ago. Over a number of months they communicated through a tiny hole they had secretly made in the wall. They fell in love and, following their release, married and started a family together.

This film tells the poignant story of their family torn apart by the tyrannical Assad dictatorship. Filming began in Syria in 2009, prior to the wave of revolutions and ongoing changes in the Middle East. At the time, Raghda was a political prisoner and Amer was caring for their young children alone. McAllister filmed in the thriving heart of the Yarmouk Camp in Damascus – now an infamous news story as the Assad regime blocked all aid and food to its inhabitants.

This intimate family portrait probes to understand why people are literally dying for change in the Arab world. As Raghda is released from prison, filmmaker Sean McAllister himself is arrested for filming and the political pressure around all activists intensifies. The family flee to Lebanon, and then to France where they are given political asylum in the sleepy town of Albi, where they now watch the revolution from afar and wait for the fall of Assad.

However, in exile Raghda’s mental heath suffers. We see their new life in France develop, but the war is now between them. In finding the freedom they fought so hard for, their relationship is beginning to fall apart.

A Syrian Love Story won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Sheffield International Documentary Festival.

Directed by: Sean McAllister
Country: UK/France/Lebanon/Syria
Running time: 80′

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Cruel Journeys: Shorts on Migration http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/cruel-journeys-shorts-on-migration/ http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/cruel-journeys-shorts-on-migration/#respond Mon, 14 Jul 2014 12:24:55 +0000 http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/?p=44084 By George Symonds

“Where can I go to have a decent life?”

On Friday 11 June, Shorts at the Frontline Club took viewers on a cinematic journey that showcased the different ways used to document the world we live in.

The theme: migration and the phases of migration.

Two at the Border by Tuna Kaptan and Felicitas Sonvilla shone a light onto the lives Ali and Nasser. The two friends attempt to make ends meet by helping refugees to the Turkish-Greek border. Ali is Palestinian, traumatised by the violence he has witnessed. “Problems, problems everywhere,” he repeats with bloodshot eyes.

“Where can I go to have a decent live?” Ali asks the universe.

As if replying to Ali, Europe’s response to the rising number of refugees has been increased militarisation of the GreeceTurkey border. The film is dedicated to Naser, who attempted to smuggle himself into Greece. The boat he was on allegedly capsized in the Aegean Sea, and he has been missing ever since.


 

What can await those who make it across the border to Greece? Xenos documents the desperation of Abu Eyad, whose departure from the Palestenian refugee camp Ain el-Helweh in Lebanon was the subject of Mahdi Fleifel’s award-winning documentary A World Not Ours (2012). Xenos is narrated through a telephone conversation between the two childhood friends. Slowly the reality of life across the border becomes apparent to Mahdi as a bitter nightmare of depression, heroin addiction, sex with men for money and the impossibility of seeing their families again.

 

  • The Source
    The Source by Marcin Sauter spirited the audience to Nagorno-Karabakh, illustrating what it’s like to stay where everyone else has left. The black and white film projected a stylised impression of trauma and loneliness felt by a woman who stayed where no one else could. In a village destroyed and deserted by war.

    Separation and acute loneliness continued in the film Adrift by Frederik Jan Depickere. We listened to Simu’s story against the stark, industrial visuals of the Arctic. Simu dreamt of becoming a pop singer. In life, his father was tortured to death for founding the anti-government UPF. His older brother suffered the same fate. Simu’s mother disappeared. His sister died of HIV as they were being smuggled from Uganda. He cannot return. As he shovels the snow, he thinks his dream is dead.

     

    The final film of the evening broke slightly from the theme of migration and touched more upon identity. What happens when one plays for a national team and the political context of what you represent changes? The Opposition by Ezra Edelman and Jeffrey Plunkett chronicles the events around the qualification play-off games for the 1974 World Cup between Chile and the USSR. Chilean football players were faced with a choice between staying part of the US-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet’s charade, or using one’s privileged position to represent the oppressed.

    The Opposition

    Whether directly linked to migration or not, all the films explored the human struggle to live. To live a decent life in dignity.

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    [vimeo clip_id=”43881240″ width=”630″ height=”354″]

    In 2011, director Rachel Beth Anderson followed two friends who abandoned their peaceful lives in Canada and returned to their home country of Libya to fight in the revolution. Hamid (26) and Tarek (21) had never fired a gun, but in 2011 they ran recklessly towards war, fuelled by their hatred of Muammar Gaddafi and their desire to be part of history.

    Once in Libya, their paths diverge immediately – Hamid blazes ahead with fearless enthusiasm, easily fitting into the camaraderie among the rebel forces. Tarek’s journey is more introspective and unsure. Untrained fighters in an unconventional war, they risk everything to reach the front lines.

    In First To Fall Beth Anderson captures the chaos and giddiness of revolution, the brutal loss of lives and innocence. Her intimate interviews with Hamid and Tarek chart their descent into war as they discover who they are and what they are capable of. In Tarek’s words, “The end of the story is different than what I thought.”

    Rachel Beth Anderson moved to Cairo in 2010, during the 2011 Egyptian revolution she worked as a videographer and field producer for PBS Frontline documentaries. She first crossed into Libya in February 2011 for what started as a short assignment, but turned into a 7 month journey.

     

    Directed by Rachel Beth Anderson and Tim Grucza
    Duration: 90′
    Year: 2013

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    Blurred Borders: The Consequences of Over-Spill from Conflict in Syria http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/blurred-borders-the-consequences-of-over-spill-from-conflict-in-syria/ http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/blurred-borders-the-consequences-of-over-spill-from-conflict-in-syria/#respond Tue, 11 Feb 2014 11:46:47 +0000 http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/?p=40231 by Sally Ashley-Cound

    On Thursday 6 February at the Frontline Club, Dan Smith, secretary general of International Alert, chaired a panel which discussed the impact of the war in Syria on the surrounding states.

    Dan Smith, Victoria Stamadianou, Martin Chulov, Julien Barnes-Dacey and Nadim Shehadi discuss Syria and the surrounding region at the Frontline Club. Photo: @mattmencarelli

    Dan Smith, Victoria Stamadianou, Martin Chulov, Julien Barnes-Dacey and Nadim Shehadi discuss Syria and the surrounding region at the Frontline Club. Photo: @mattmencarelli

    Smith asked the panel what could be done to improve the situation in the region?

    Julien Barnes-Dacey, who was based in Syria as a journalist from 2007 to 2010, said:

    “Clearly the only solution is a Syrian solution. Syria is sucking the life out of the region. It’s Syria that is promoting a refugee crisis and until that situation is resolved you’re not going to get a regional resolution to all of the accompanying issues.”

    http://twitter.com/maggieinlondon/status/431517865490259969

    Lebanon is absorbing many of Syria’s six million displaced people but the country has many of its own existing problems. An audience member asked if these problems had got worse since the influx of refugees.

    Nadim Shehadi, an associate fellow for the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham, said:

    “. . . You would consider it as a failed 20th century state as compared to Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Libya who were successful. These components that we thought were the failure of Lebanon are what’s holding it together now. . . . Lebanon as a society can live without a state because it never had any.”

    But the influx of people, while being supported by Lebanon’s ability for self-preservation without the structure of a state, is not sustainable, said Victoria Stamadianou, Lebanon country manager for International Alert:

    “It’s important to remember that resilience is depletable. . . . We’ve seen a lot of refugees being hosted by communities, everyone expected that there would be massive conflict across the country and that hasn’t happened . . . they’ve managed to be resilient but that’s something that can be depleted and needs to be strengthened.”

    From the audience, Sarah Williams, who spent six months in Jordan last year, asked how the country has been stabilised by the Syrian conflict.

    Barnes-Dacey:

    “[In 2011-2012] things were really rough. . . . There was a lot of unprecedented domestic pressure against the king . . . you had unrest in the south . . . I think that what Syria has done is to quell that. . . . In a general sense in Jordan at the moment, ‘This is better than what’s happening in Syria at the moment and we don’t want to risk that.’

    “It’s worth saying that this is a short-term thing. Long term you’ve got the refugees, you’ve got Islamists . . . the king [still] has huge economic problems.”

    The panel agreed that the battle lines may seem to be drawn along religious and ideological lines but they are in fact political.
    Shehadi said:

    “I think the Shia–Sunni rift is overplayed, when Erdogan of Turkey and Hamad of Qatar and also Abdullah of Saudi Arabia were supporting Assad, it was not because he was Shia or because he was Sunni, it was because they thought they could do business with him.”

    Martin Chulov, Middle East correspondent for The Guardian, said that they do however sustain the conflict:

    “While I agree with that analysis and the cause of this conflict wasn’t sectarian, what’s sustains it in part certainly is.”

    Barnes-Dacey agreed:

    “Very deliberately. . . . [It’s about] regional power play and regional alliances but those alliances are using sectarian networks to achieve their political ambitions.”

    An audience member asked, what is the long-term solution?

    Chulov:

    “I don’t put any faith at all in the feckless political class in Lebanon. I think that the issues are far bigger than them even if they wanted to confront them. I do think there has to be a point, an intersection of the strategic interests of the key players – the Saudis, the Iranians in particular, but also the Russians and to some extent the Americans.”

    Carol Allen-Storey, a photojournalist in the audience asked, where are the visionaries of the future, who is going to inspire?

    Chulov and Shehadi said that they couldn’t come up with many suggestions for the future leaders in the region, however Stamadianou was more optimistic:

    “You can’t just hope that you’re going to find this new breed of people that didn’t exist there and they’re going to solve all the issues. . . . What you can do is . . . see if you can find ways to model different approaches to doing politics and supporting them to change the grain – working with the grain to change the grain.”

    Barnes-Dacey:

    “Today in a sense the Syrian population has been unleashed, so one can say there are no distinct ‘Mandelas’ that one can see on the horizon but there’s a whole people that have discovered a political awakening which was kept away from them for so long.”

    Watch and listen to the full discussion below:


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    ‘A World Not Ours’ – And A Story That Now Is http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/a-world-not-ours-and-a-story-that-now-is/ http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/a-world-not-ours-and-a-story-that-now-is/#respond Mon, 10 Feb 2014 12:59:59 +0000 http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/?p=40261 By Lizzie Kendal

    On Friday 7 February, the Frontline Club was fully booked and the audience buzzed with anticipation for the screening of A World Not Ours followed by a Q&A with director Mahdi Fleifel, editor Michael Aaglund and a last-minute addition of producer Patrick Campbell. The film is set in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh in Lebanon, where director Fleifel spent most of his childhood summer holidays since his family moved to Denmark. It is edited down from over 100 hours of footage, both from home videos shot by his father and from different filming trips he made.

    “I didn’t really know where this was going. I was just filming and filming and filming, with this some sort of idea that one day I’ll make something,” said Fleifel.

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    Fleifel originally planned to make a fictional film based in Ain el-Helweh, but the logistics of working there with a crew made him hesitate. As more and more footage came to light from years of filming family and friends, Fleifel and Aaglund realised that there was a bigger and much more personal story to tell about life in the camp:

    “There was a necessity to it you know,” said Fleifel. “And I did feel that it was important in a way, because here was something that was such a big part of my life that I had never been able to share with anyone.”

    However, at first they didn’t anticipate the media exposure and awards that the film has gone on to achieve:

    “The only thing that kept me going was that if no one else ever is going to watch this then I will watch it with my family, and it would be a record for my family, and if one day I have kids then they can watch it.”

    In fact the intimate nature of the film is what provides its strength and charm. As questions turned to the wider political and historical climate, producer Campbell explained:

    “You can’t fit everything in and I think pretty much from the outset it was a very personal film for Mahdi, and it was, you know, these people exist in this context and if you want to explore it [the situation for Palestinians] you can look at the macro or the micro, and that [the micro] is what we went for. . . . We didn’t set out to make a definitive history of anything.”

    Aaglund added:

    “This was meant to be the gateway into this kind of world, and the history sort of seeps in via the characters.”

    An audience member remarked how the two main characters, Fleifel’s grandfather and best friend Abu Iyad, offer a particularly valuable insight into what it is like for ordinary people of different generations living in Ain el-Helweh. Fleifel replied:

    “I sometimes sit and think what kind of an experience it would have been for my grandfather to suddenly wake up one day having lost everything and then finding himself in a tent with his siblings, waiting. And then 65-years later he is still waiting.”

    Although his grandfather is apparently non-plussed at his own rise to fame on the silver screen, as Fleifel recounted their phone conversations:

    “He’s like ‘Yeah, yeah,’ you know, ‘Just don’t forget to pray!’ ”

    A World Not Ours
    If you missed out on this screening you can catch it on Friday 21 February at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. There is also a campaign to get the film eligible to be nominated for an Oscar, which you can join in with here. [vimeo clip_id=”57316804″ width=”630″ height=”354″]

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