JE VEUX VOIR
(Baddi Chouf )
France 2008 | 75 Min. | 35 mm, OmeU
July 2006. A war breaks out in Lebanon. A new war, but not just one more war. A war that crushes the hopes of peace and the momentum of our generation. We no longer know what to write, what stories to recount, what images to show. We ask ourselves: “What can cinema do?” That question, we decide to translate it into reality. We go to Beirut with an “icon”, an actress who, to us, symbolizes cinema, Catherine Deneuve. She will meet our preferred actor, Rabih Mroué. Together, they will drive through the regions devastated by the conflict. Through their presence, their meeting, we hope to find the beauty which our eyes no longer perceive. It is the beginning of an unpredictable, unexpected adventure…
Catherine Deneuve embodies a certain idea of cinema, of a cinema with a long history. She also embodies intelligence. You feel she always maintains the right distance. Her film choices reflect a spirit, a trend of thought. Catherine’s presence creates a dreamlike atmosphere, an improbable vision amid the ruins and the landscapes of South Lebanon. In fact, she radiates fiction, an aura which reminds us of the definition given by Walter Benjamin “the appearance of a remoteness that seems so close to us”. Rabih, somehow, represents us, the film makers, in the film. He is an important artist and performer who works on Lebanese reality and creates a new relation to theatre and representation. Moreover, Rabih is from a village of South Lebanon, Bint El Jbeil, which was almost completly destroyed during the 2006 war. He had not returned there since then, and in his own words, he was weary of going back. We were also interested by his attitude. So we suggested to Rabih to drive to the south with Catherine and go to his village. As he put it: “Things with her will be different.” So there he was on the images, by her side, although he greatly mistrusts images. (Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige)
