Paradis Perdu

It happens in, under, through the holes of Beirut, its floating gaps, along gullies from drilled pipes, in the dust of what is left of it, remained, because it is of the past this Beirut we see, of the recent past, filmed in 1995, before the city center collapsed by the war was razed and rebuilt.

A young gay man falls head over heels in love with an Algerian labourer he meets in transvestite bar where he is a regular.

A man invites a woman to share his room in a hostel and gradually falls in love with her.

Lunettes and Myope: two ways of resisting the world. Identical and opposites, face to face or, more often, back to back, in a small room in a timeless space. Twins and adversaries, these two girls make one: Lunettes uses her glasses to help her understand the world, or at least accept it; Myope can't see, except within herself, and lost in her blurred, but sharp, experience of the world, rebels continuously. Incited by Lunettes, Myope creates (in the same city and climate, but in another dimension) two characters: Pierrot and Agathe. To a certain degree, these two are a disjointed response to Myope, Lunettes, neighbors, and distant representatives. It's very hot. The inhabitants are interested in fountains and shadows. They build cool cabins, hanging curtains over the balcony balustrades. Asphalt sticks to the soles of sandals and when the wind blows, the canopies flap above the café terraces.

She was 18. They were in love and lived together for ten years. 20 years later, he receives a letter from her. L is very ill. He grabs hold of his camera and films while trying to make her talk about other things, about cinema and what’s become of those political struggles…

Michel Recanati was a militant leader in the May, 1968 riots in Paris, organizing many groups to meet, discuss, and act on leftist principles both before and after the disturbances. He was imprisoned for a short while in 1973. Disillusioned after the failure of the demonstrations and the death of the only woman he had loved, his life seems to have changed from a period of hope and activism to one of bottomless despair. His friend, Romain Goupil wrote and directed this biographical documentary. Death at 30 received the 1982 Cannes Film Festival's Golden Camera Award for "Best First Feature-Length Film."

France, 1972. Albertine, a teenager in rebellion against school, the rancid family and religion, asserts her rights to a sexuality without obstacles. Wiith her friends, and the right to the abortion for the minor ones. With her friends, she campaigns for the rights to sexual pleasure and abortion for minor girls.

Through my window-camera, during urban adventures, views of Algiers, where, as a child, after Algerian Independence, I learned about liberty, and which some decades later after immigrating against my will and deliberately becoming an exile, I chose as my city. I was then a "wife of the Republic of Madagascar," as the left-hand side page of my passport noted, while the right-hand side declared "of the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary." Disembodied, words off-screen, intervening one over the other, simultaneous encounters of polyphonic voices glide.