Beirut Apt Documentary Response
| May 20, 2008 | Posted by caroline under arts and literature, on identity, Uncategorized |
I went to the Inside Out film festival showing of “Beirut Apt” here in Toronto, today.
It was playing at the Isabel Bader theatre, and was up for the Audience award…so I paid even more attention, since I knew I’d have to sign a ballot with my opinion when I left.
The doc was short, it was less than an hour long and it flew by. I think it was well-put together, considering the subject of Israel and Lebanon has been thrown around a lot in documentaries. Though, the issue of homosexual Arabs is not really an openly discussed subject.
I liked that the doc was short, I liked that it hit a lot of specific points along a surface, and that it packed it all into a 50min set. I’m sure they could’ve come up with more and probably lost a lot of footage in editing, but the goal of some documentaries is to create curiosity, to strike a person’s interest or fancy..It’s something I’ve always found in film docs—you have only so much of a person’s time, and every frame has to strike a chord of some sort. People are so quick to get distracted, as it is.
So the characters in Beirut Apt are nothing special. That’s what it is –they don’t have big names, they didn’t pour out their hearts or have dramatic, intense moments with the camera..on the contrary, they just spoke in a very conversational manner about their encounters as gay, lesbian, and Lebanese individuals. It just leaves more doors open for the viewer to RELATE to the subject when they don’t go in too deep, I think, sometimes. It’s a little like small talk–surface conversations are just easier to steer.
That’s not to say the viewers are comfortable and not moved to question the issues at hand. In fact, things are said so lightly and simply by the subjects that you may brush it off and laugh. The end of the movie, with the last, most poignant subject, really tied things together. There were some excellent aesthetic qualities to this film, once again simple and not in-your-face.
And upon discussing the politics of the documentary, which was possibly the most important (“everything is political”, even if i don’t want it to be!!:)) aspect, I have been enlightened on a few things re: class structures and how they manifest themselves in the film and its interview subjects. Beirut Apt. features members from a spectrum of classes.
For more info, check out:
http://www.myspace.com/thebeirutapt
http://beirut.helem.net/
