Motion

Letter from Beirut documents the filmmaker's return to Beirut during one of the lulls, three years after the outbreak of the civil war, animated by the urge to return. She is confronted by the physical, emotional and psychological ravages of the war, terrified and sorrowful, she cannot find her place in the city. In that quest, she communicates with everyday people, friends, neighbors, people riding the bus across the city's eastern and western flanks. To pace her journeying and dramatic unraveling of the film, Saab borrows the guise of a letter read in a voice-over, written by world-renowned poet Etel Adnan. A rare document from the civil war, Letter from Beirut lays bare and spontaneously how people make sense of their everyday in the midst of chaos, violence, terror and sorrow.

The film reconstructs through an array of visual fragments, a multiplicity of languages, of peoples and their identities, the unique portrait of the poet and painter Etel Adnan.

Seen through the work of eight leading artists from the Middle East, Axis of Light is a poignant and absorbing observation of the influences of conflict.

Michael Shamberg's P.S. Beirut, Chapter One is a personal journey to Beirut and the first chapter of a series bent on «discovering» the lost briefcase of Walter Benjamin which went missing when Benjamin's body was found

An expressionistic portrait of Etel Adnan, immersed in her art and the world. Working without ego, Adnan asks, what does it mean to be alive, to live through catastrophe, to experience time.