War stories

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Nadine of the Beirut Diaries from Mai Masri.

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These frames from The One Man Village show how the protagonist Semaan forgets his past and returns to live in his village, which was destroyed years ago.

Digital Studio talks to two independent filmmakers in Lebanon about making films with digital cams in a war-torn land.

Although Lebanon has constantly lived with the threat of a war ready to erupt at any time, this country has produced some of the most poignant and compelling films of the Arab world.

The dearth of local funding and commercial backing does not seem to have deterred independent filmmakers from picking up their cameras and going out to shoot.

In fact, with affordable entry-level HD cameras making film production a lot easier than in the past, a whole new generation of new filmmakers is emerging from this war-torn land.

Lebanese writer and director, Simon El Habre and Palestinian veteran filmmaker, Mai Masri, who lives in Beirut, have both taken the documentary route.

El Habre saw a story in his own village and decided to pursue it with a Sony HD 750R while Masri, egged by what the war did to the people around her, stepped out into the streets with her HDV camera.

El Habre will be working on his debut production The One Man Village this year while Masri, a seasoned filmmaker has more than 13 documentaries to her credit, some made with her filmmaker husband, Jean Khalil Chamoun.

The One Man Village is the story of El Habre's uncle, Semaan, who returned to his village, which was destroyed during the Lebanese civil war which raged from from 1975 to 1990. Semaan is the sole inhabitant of his village as the people who left it have never come back to live there again.

"After the war, our village, which is in the Mount of Lebanon, was completely destroyed and the Christians left for Beirut," explains El Habre.

"I was only six when we left the village. For my uncle, Semaan, the past is past. He wants to live his life in the present. He used to always dream of going back one day to his village and living on a farm. So he did that six years ago."

"Today, he lives alone in his village on his farm. No one else has ever wanted to come back and live there again. Many don't want to return because of the memories it brings with it. In this documentary, we observe my uncle's daily life at the village and also look at people who come and go from there. This documentary is meant to act as healing from the past."

El Habre reckons he will need at least a budget of US $400,000 to make a good quality documentary. For this documentary, he is using the Sony HD 750R with a Pro 35 adaptor and 35 mm cine lenses (Hi Speed Primes-Zeiss).

The filmmaker plans to blow this up for the big screen and will shoot it over a period of one year.

"I don't want to just make a documentary; I want to make a beautiful one. I have decided to shoot this over the duration over a year so that I get a bit of every season in. This is because the landscape here changes every season and you get beautiful shots while it also shows how Semaan works during different times of the year."

"People may argue that the HD 750R is a bit heavy for a documentary but it goes well with the concept of my film. I am not looking to get every single detail of his life. This camera will be on a tripod all the time; not shoulder mounted."

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