Once upon a time, Beirut = Kan ya makan Beirut

Two young women, distraught over the destruction of Beirut and curious to get beneath the romantic, mythical stereotypes of the city in its heyday, visit a reclusive and eccentric film collector. In an abandoned theatre they mine his huge archive of films, entering a vast cinematic history of Beirut from the silent era, through the French-directed films of the 1930s, films of the 1960s by Arab filmmakers, to the large scale American studio films of the 1970s. Drawing on hundreds of excerpts, Saab portrays the cinematic fantasies of Beirut that proliferated in the prewar era. From temptresses to spies to villains, Beirut was a playground in which consistently fantastic narratives took place. The two young women literally enter these films. Appearing as characters in scenes they comment on the narratives from a contemporary perspective, attempting to reconcile this imagery with the war-savaged Beirut of today. A historical mapping of the cinematic landscape of Lebanon that reveals an explicit interest in memory, ‘Once Upon a Time, Beirut’ actively seeks to understand how media representations have manipulated the identity of this complex city. In French and Arabic with English subtitles.