By Richard Brody --Netflix is a cinematic rummage sale: some authentic treasures gleam enticingly atop a pile of junk, within which even rarer gems lurk—but it requires some digging. Reader, I dug—and found that Netflix is offering a batch of several dozen Lebanese films from the past fifty years, at least two of which are extraordinary fusions of imagination and observation. Both of those films, “Whispers,” from 1980, and “The Little Wars,” from 1982, are by the same director, Maroun Bagdadi; the first is a documentary and the other is a work of fiction, but both, remarkably, prominently feature the same person—the photojournalist Nabil Ismaïl, who is a subject in “Whispers” and an actor in “The Little Wars”—in an overlap that exemplifies Bagdadi’s original approach to both forms.

“Whispers”

The documentary follows the poet Nadia Tueni as she travels through Lebanon, which at the time was physically and emotionally devastated after five years of civil war. The format is something like a virtual, fictional road movie, albeit one in which the drama lies not in a specific narrative but in the question of Lebanon’s immediate future. From the start, there’s death in the air—at a gathering of young people, a man sings a melancholy ballad of a mother’s grief for a son killed in war, and the song continues on the soundtrack as Bagdadi shows images of a city’s bombed-out buildings and rubble-strewn streets. Tueni and Ismaïl wander through the desolate cityscape, the labyrinth of Beirut’s ruins, as Ismaïl takes photographs. Then, on his own, Ismaïl plunges into the busy heart of a market street, in an extended and exciting handheld shot that’s accompanied by his voice-over, which—like the voice-overs in Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah”—creates a virtual image of the past, which, fused with present-tense observations, renders the past seemingly more present than what’s seen on the screen.

by arabnews.com -- NAJIA HOUSSARI -- BEIRUT: The closure and curfew period in Lebanon has been extended for two more weeks to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), prompting people in Tripoli, Beirut, and Sidon to take to the streets. The protests were spontaneous, considering that the neighborhoods from which they started are poor, where the residents work for daily wages. The Minister of Social Affairs and Tourism in the caretaker government Ramzi Musharrafieh said on Tuesday that “230,000 families in Lebanon benefit from aid and have been receiving 400,000 Lebanese pounds ($263) per month since the beginning of the crisis.” He added that “25 percent of the Lebanese people do not need aid.” Hundreds of people took to the streets in Tripoli, Sidon, and Beirut to denounce the suspension of the economy and the failure to provide people with alternatives.

One of the protesters said: “Contracting COVID-19 and dying of it is easier than having my family and myself starve to death.” Protesters in Tripoli took to Al-Nour Square on Monday after days of expressing their impatience and protesting outside the houses of the city’s officials. One of the protesters said: “COVID-19 does not scare us. We cannot tolerate this life of humiliation anymore. The officials in power have starved and robbed us.” The protesters clashed with the security forces — the army and the Internal Security Forces — hurling stones and water bottles at them. Their chants demanded financial compensation for the poorest families, who have not been able to work for two weeks and must wait a further two weeks before they can return to their jobs, resulting in a whole month without any financial income.

The pandemic has taken its toll on shopping destinations worldwide and the latest chain to shutter is Godiva by the end of …

by english.aawsat.com -- Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi stressed Sunday that the Lebanese Constitution was written to be respected by officials and not to become a source of tension. “The Constitution has been created to be implemented and not to be a cause of dispute,” he said during Sunday’s mass service in Bkirki. It was also written “to be a source of agreement and not a source of disagreement.” His statement came in light of a recent political dispute between President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri on the President’s role in forming the new government.

Aoun says the President has a constitutional right to approve the names of the proposed ministers before signing its decree, while Hariri accuses the President of rejecting, without any explanation, the lineups he has been presenting him. Rahi reminded politicians of "Article D" of the Constitution, saying the people are the source of authority and sovereignty and therefore, shall exercise these powers through the constitutional institutions. “Don’t you fear God, the people and the court of conscience and history? How can unyielding political positions - that are destructive for the state as an entity and constitutional institutions - persist and under what national conscience and under what justification?”