Until 10 December, a retrospective of the work of the Lebanese war reporter and film-maker, who died in 2019, takes place in several cinemas in Paris. The retrospective is held as part of the Noisy-le-Sec Franco-Arab Film Festival.
Born in 1948 in Beirut, the young brunette woman, whose silhouette appears in the poetic "Beirut, ma ville" (1982), covered the war in Lebanon (1975-1990), seeking poetry amid the ruins, notably in "Les Enfants de la guerre" (1976).
In 1993, in the aftermath of the war in Lebanon, Jocelyne Saab embarked on a project to reconstitute a Lebanese film library in Beirut, a vast task of archiving and restoring works that led to a series of screenings at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage in Tunisia. Jocelyne Saab also documented the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian revolution, with "Iran, l'utopie en marche" (1980).
Also involved in the Palestinian question, "Le Front du refus" (1975) tells the story of the fedayeen and their daily lives.
This retrospective also celebrates the release of the DVD box set "Jocelyne Saab, cinéaste (période 1974-1982)", and the publication of "Le livre pour sortir au jour" by Jocelyne Saab by Éditions commune. The writer Sabyl Ghoussoub, winner of the 2022 Goncourt des lycéens prize for "Beyrouth-sur-Seine", is associated with this retrospective of Jocelyne Saab's films (in February 2024 in Marseille).
Jocelyne Saab retrospective. Programme in Paris, until 10 December. Jocelynesaab.org http://Jocelynesaab.org