At the Beirut Documentary Film Festival
The Lebanese National Museum ... a guard of memory and a witness to the civil war
The museum is located at a strategic point known at the time as the demarcation line between two Lebanese regions known to have violent clashes.
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The Lebanese National Museum mounted a virtual art platform that reflected the reality of a building that stores all the tragedies of the civil war that took place between 1975 and 1990, and spun them with the artifacts inside, thus becoming a guardian of memory.
Finally, the Beirut Artistic Documentary Film Festival presented an online evening entitled "The National Museum .. Guardian of Memory", in cooperation with the Italian Cultural Institute.
The festival's foundation and curator of exhibitions, Alice Maghbagh, organized this hypothetical event, and chose the National Museum as a witness to the diaries of the 15-year-old Lebanese civil war.
The museum is located at a strategic point known at the time as the demarcation line separating two Lebanese regions known to have violent clashes.
The festival featured two tapes by the Lebanese director Bahij Hajij (The National Museum ... The Challenge of Forgetting), produced in 1996, and (The National Museum ... Revival), produced in 2016.
In the first film, the director explores the depths of the civil war, its madness and its impact on the Lebanese, and depicts the National Museum from the perspective of dozens of Lebanese who lived in a different way, and each one of them had his memories of this pivotal place.
According to a woman who lived near the museum during the civil war, what was remarkable was the return of life, traffic jams and the constant movement of hundreds of pedestrians as soon as the violent conflicts subsided.
"It was not more than half an hour after the fighting stopped, until life came back as if nothing had happened," she says.
For some, the museum's experience was very bitter, as the Lebanese were witness to the death of innocent people at this fatal point, and the humiliation that residents experienced in order to obtain a little gasoline or a bundle of bread.
A man said in the movie: "Some people waited for long hours for someone from the Second Zone to bring him a little gasoline or bread to feed his family."
The director provided rich human testimonies about the museum area, which formed a meeting network for human wealth, as it brought together people from different sects and social classes from the rich and the poor.
The documentary focuses on the archaeological treasures in the museum and the restoration of the building beginning in 1995, when the Lebanese unanimously agreed on this symbol that embodies their identity, heritage and hopes.
The viewer goes on a poetic journey accompanied by the music of the Lebanese composer, Zad Moltaqa in the basement of the museum, which remained closed until 2016, and is devoted to funerary art and extends over an area of 700 square meters.
The second film accompanies the restoration and rehabilitation of the museum after the end of the civil war in 1990.
"Working on the Internet has become an integral part of the creative process today, and I naturally want to keep pace with development and complete the cultural and artistic path," Magoghab told Reuters. "The total collapse that Lebanon is going through today, economically and politically, is like a complete bankruptcy."
However, we will not allow anyone to harm the culture or cancel its role.
Culture is a treasure.
In order to preserve this treasure, we must resist. ”
After the performances, a dialogue session was organized on the Zoom platform with the curators, joined by director Bahij Hajij, Director General of the General Authority of Museums Anne-Marie Afeish, restoration specialist Isabel Doumit Skaf, and more than 100 viewers from different countries.
Anne-Marie Afeich said that the first video summarizes two pivotal stages in the life of the museum, so that we discover that the destruction can turn into a wonderful lesson for hope, as we learn about the huge archaeological collections in the museum.
Afeesh spoke about the restoration phase that lasted until 1999, and was led by a small team motivated by passion, and highlighted humidity and the predominance of water on the lower layer.
"The tape documents the various stages that the museum went through," she said.
Our small team lived through very strong and emotional moments. ”
Restoration specialist Isabel Doumit Skaf said that the goal of restoring the museum was not to restore the building in good condition or erase the traces of the fluctuations it went through, but rather to preserve the life of the antiquities "and to provide them with the stability they need to survive for a long time."
Home of the fighters
The General Director of the General Authority for Museums, Anne-Marie Afeiche, said:
“Certainly, the museum was a home for the fighters who lived in it for a long time, yet they did not expose it to vandalism.
It was clear that they did not want to destroy the place.
They just wanted to complete the operations required of them. ”
The Lebanese director, Bahij Hajij, explained that he insisted on providing the first tape with small details that tell the stories of people and their crossing of the strategic area during the war, and the difficulties they went through.
Hajij considered that the two videos are primarily a delicate work dealing with memory and heritage, "and it is an opportunity to salute the guardian of memory, the National Museum."
Alice Magghab:
"Working via the Internet has become part of the creative process, and I want to keep pace with the development."
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