The Ruins

Between March and April 1974, students at the American University of Beirut occupied university offices for 37 days, demonstrating against a tuition increase. Fast forward to 2011, in the midst of the Arab Spring, filmmakers Rania and Raed Rafei decide to step back and reconsider the present situation in the light of the 1970s, a period pregnant with hope, but also a prelude to civil war. With the Lebanese student revolt of 1974 as their starting point, the filmmakers direct an absorbing documentary on the core issues of revolution and democracy. In addition to a meticulous re-enactment, they include theatrical improvisations in which activists give their interpretations of the student leaders’ actions in 1974.

While living abroad, a queer filmmaker occasionaly returns to his hometown of Tripoli, Lebanon. His quest to confront the city that once rejected him inspires reflections that give the film the character of an urban symphony.

When words fail to articulate the meaning of “queerness,” silence is the answer to an impossible coming out. This essay film ponders the place of queer utopia in a world of difference and privilege. The wandering eye of a Lebanese queer filmmaker oscillates between the clamor of gay rights slogans at the Stonewall monument in New York, and the warm ordinariness of a public garden in his hometown, Tripoli, Lebanon, where homosexuality remains illegal and taboo.

Eccomi ... Eccoti unfolds as a virtual road trip navigating between Italy and Lebanon. Conditioned to live in a long-distance relationship with his partner because of strict European visa regulations, the director patches together the shared moments in an attempt to create a possible day-to-day reality for their couple. With a lyrical, ambient soundscape set atop a dreamy, atmospheric visual style that oscillates between still photography and moving images, the film explores what it means to be gay in contemporary Beirut and existential discomfort that blocks one from reaching a sense of complete-ness. Does such in-completeness have to do, in particular, with being gay? Or is it related to a grander malaise endemic to the human condition?