File picture of Lebanese actress Nada Abu Farhat in Sidiqin, during the shooting of "Summer Rain" by Director Philippe Aractingi

Lebanon’s civil war ended a quarter of a century ago but its filmmakers remain fixated on this dark period, seeing their movies as a kind of catharsis to help heal collective trauma.

The industry’s focus contrasts sharply with a society that has yet to come to terms with its devastating past, where war has marked the last five generations — and each community, be it Christian or Muslim, looks back through a different lens.

The latest example to hit the screens is "Mirath" ("Heritages") by French-Lebanese filmmaker Philippe Aractingi.

Mingling fact and fiction, Aractingi shares with his children memories of the 1975-1990 war, his exile and his return home, a story to which most Lebanese can relate.

"The Lebanese tend to deny the past and the war" that pitted Christian militias against Palestinian groups and their Lebanese Muslim and leftist allies, Aractingi told AFP.

"So discussing the war through cinema is kind of cathartic. In ‘Mirath’, I talk about how we need to communicate with our children, so that (war) never returns."

AFP / Ramzi Haidar

 

File photo of Lebanese musician and actor Ziad Rahbani (R)during shooting of late Lebanese director Randa Chahal’s film "Cerf Volant"

Among Aractingi’s other films are the 2005 "Bosta" (The Autobus) and the 2007 "Under the Bombs", which both represented Lebanon at the Academy Awards.

Residents of Iraq’s second-largest city, which has been under the control of ISIS since early June, have reportedly started clashing with militants, Tim Arango reports for The New York Times. They’re chafing under the brutal rule of an organization too extreme for Al Qaeda, even. But ISIS’s assault on the region’s cultural heritage has been particular cause for local alienation from the group.

The inhabitants of Mosul started to react negatively to ISIS’ rule in the city after the militants razed a tomb that was thought to have contained the remains of the prophet Jonah. Jonah is revered in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths, and the tomb was one of the city’s icons. 

So far, resistance to ISIS’s drive to destroy historic sites in the city — with almost 24 marked for demolition — has been patchy but nevertheless noticeable. A mass of citizens confronted ISIS fighters as they attempted to destroy the city’s famed leaning minaret. According to witnesses, the landmark was saved. 

Inhabitants of Mosul have claimed that residents of the city have formed armed gangs to counter ISIS. Bashar al-Kiki, the chairman of the Nineveh Provincial Council, of which Mosul is a part, told the Times that armed citizens had killed four ISIS militants. 

“The people of Mosul are intensely angry at ISIS,” al-Kiki told The New York Times. “They can’t bear them anymore. This volcano of anger will explode soon.”

  BEIRUT: Authorities will begin implementing the security plan for Beirut and the Bekaa next month, Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk announced in remarks published Tuesday. “August will be the month to continue the security plan in Bekaa and Beirut, especially after the Cabinet scrapped wanted lists based on informants,” Machnouk told pan-Arab Al-Hayat.  (Link)  

  Abdulrahman al-Rashed A host of Israeli dailies have increasingly published calls for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the existence of Hamas, and not just suppress it. Those calling for a full scale invasion admit that the war will cost the Israelis a high price, but they say that the local public opinion is […]

  Influential British band Massive Attack dedicated their only Middle East gig to the children of Gaza, openly condemning Israel’s "massacre" of the Palestinians. As the band played in Byblos, in Lebanon, just a few hundred kilometers north of Gaza, swaying music-lovers on Tuesday night held up Palestinian flags as Massive Attack issued a rare, […]

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – It must be noted that Islamists were not spared judgment. Five Muslim men were publicly flogged, each receiving 70 lashes for not fasting during the holy month. Muslims are required to not eat or drink between sunrise and sunset during Ramadan. A spokesman for Iran’s National Council of Resistance […]

Soldier’s heads were hoisted on poles as they were killed in Syria.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – Although Christians have lived in northern Iraq and Syria for nearly two-thousand years, and at least six hundred years before Islam, today they face extinction across the region.  "Our people are disappearing," Canon Andrew White, head of the Anglican Church in Iraq "It looks as though the end could be very near," he told the BBC. A week ago, Christians were warned to either leave the city of Mosul and other areas under Islamic State control, or they would have to pay a tax or be put to death. Today, nobody has heard from those Christians and nobody knows what is happening to them.

Are they being quietly "put to the sword" as this militant strain of Islam asks they be? The Human Rights Watch reported on July 14 that homes in Mosul were painted with red letters to indicate Christian homes. Other homes of Shiite Muslims were also adorned.

Christians who have escaped reported being deprived of all their belongings except their clothes. Jewelry, money, automobiles, even food and water were confiscated on the edge of town as Christians were forced to pass through Islamic State checkpoints.  However, we know a number of Christians remained, for many reasons. Some were too destitute to travel or had weak and infirm family who could not make the desert trek to safety.  Those that left were warned "don’t even dream of returning."

    After Lebanese networks last week aired a unified newscast in solidarity with Palestinians suffering a bloody war in the Gaza Strip, LBCI television launched on Monday a new campaign to condemn the Islamic State’s attacks on Christians in Iraq.   LBCI changed its logo to “Lbن,” and took the initiative after Muslim Iraqi […]

  French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a joint statement on Monday that they are taking steps to ease the suffering of Christians now fleeing northern Iraq en masse.   “We will aid those who have been displaced following the threats from the Islamic State [formerly known as Islamic […]

  Iraqi Christians who were forced to flee the northern city of Mosul under threat of forced conversion or execution by jihadists have spoken of their terror as churches were turned into mosques and their homes and property confiscated.   The expulsion of one of the world’s oldest Christian communities provoked condemnation and anguish from […]