Saturday, May 17, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
2men, 1war, 33years on...
Having fought on opposing sides during the brutal Lebanese civil war, two men reconcile openly with their violent history to find forgiveness.
Eric Trometer has been a cinematographer for the last 8 years, he then started directing short films, music videos and founded Tarmak Films in London and been producing and directing various documentaries for independent and broadcast markets.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
MAJOR EVENTS UNTIL FEB 14th 2008
Key events and attacks in Lebanon since former premier Rafik Hariri was assassinated on Valentine's Day three years ago:
2005
- Feb 14: Hariri and 22 others are killed in a car bombing on Beirut's seafront. Anti-Syrian politicians accuse Syria of involvement but Damascus denies.
- Feb 28: The pro-Syrian cabinet of Omar Karami resigns.
- March 8: More than 400,000 demonstrate in support of Syria, responding to calls Hizbullah and Amal.
- March 14: More than a million demonstrate against Syrian influence.
- April 26: The last Syrian soldiers leave Lebanon after three decades of presence.
- May 7: Return of Christian Gen. Michel Aoun after 15 years in exile. A year later he allies himself with Hizbullah.
- May 29-June 19: The anti-Syrian opposition gains an absolute majority in legislative elections.
- July 19: Hariri ally Fouad Saniora forms a government including Hizbullah.
- Aug 30: Four pro-Syrian officers, including the head of the Lebanese presidential guard, arrested as part of Hariri assassination probe.
- Oct 12: Syria says its former intelligence chief in Lebanon, Ghazi Kanaan, who has been questioned by U.N. investigators, has killed himself.
- Oct 20: An initial U.N. probe into Hariri's assassination implicates Syrian intelligence officials and former pro-Syrian Lebanese authorities.
- Dec 12: Assassination of anti-Syrian MP Gebran Tueni. The Saniora cabinet calls for an international tribunal to try Hariri's assassins.
Shiite ministers quit the government but return three months later.
- Dec 30: Former Syrian deputy premier, Abdel Halim Khaddam, accuses President Bashar al-Assad of having threatened Hariri.
2006
- Jan 23: Belgian Serge Brammertz takes over as head of the U.N. probe into Hariri's assassination.
- July 12-August 14: Israel and Hizbullah go to war after the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah. Nearly 1,400 people are killed.
- Aug 11, U.N. resolution 1701 calls for the end of fighting and provides for the deployment of a strengthened peacekeeping force, the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
- Oct 1: Israel withdraws its troops from southern Lebanon as UN force reaches 5,000 soldiers. The Lebanese army deploys at the border for the first time in decades.
- Nov 11: Failure of talks aimed at forming a government of national unity. First of six pro-Syrian ministers resign.
- Nov 21: Anti-Syrian industry minister Pierre Gemayel shot dead.
- Dec 1: Start of an open-ended demonstration by the opposition who set up tents in downtown Beirut near the prime minister's office.
2007
- Jan 23-25, 2007: Seven dead in clashes between pro-government and anti-government supporters.
- May 20: Start of clashes between the army and Islamist group Fatah al-Islam the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in north Lebanon. The army takes the camp in early September. More than 400 are killed, including 168 soldiers.
- June 10: A controversial U.N. resolution setting up an international tribunal for the Hariri killing comes into force.
- June 13: MP Walid Eido among 10 dead in an attack.
- June 24: Six killed in an attack on Spanish U.N. peacekeepers.
- Sept 19: Antoine Ghanem becomes the fourth anti-Syrian MP assassinated since the May 2005 elections.
- Nov 23: The mandate of President Emile Lahoud expires. The post remains vacant, the majority and opposition having failed to elect his successor.
- Dec 12: A car bomb kills Gen. Francois El Hajj and a bodyguard near Beirut. Hajj had been tipped to replace army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman, the frontrunner to become president.
2008
- Jan 16: U.S. President George Bush, visiting the Middle East, calls for an end to "Syrian interference" in Lebanon.
- Jan 25: Four killed, including top anti-terrorism officer Captain Wissam Eid, in a bomb blast targeting a security convoy in a Christian suburb of Beirut.
- Jan 27: Seven die in clashes between army and demonstrators in Beirut.
- Feb 9: Failure of Arab mediation effort. Failure at the 14th attempt to elect a president for Lebanon.
- Feb 13: Hizbullah announces the murder the previous day in Damascus of top commander Imad Mughnieh in a car bombing.
- Feb 14: Hundreds of thousands of government supporters rally in Beirut to mark the third anniversary of Hariri's death as Hizbullah holds a mass funeral ceremony for Mughniyeh.(AFP)
Beirut, 14 Feb 08, 13:41
Friday, January 25, 2008
UNDER THE BOMBS - PHILIPPE ARACTINGI IN LONDON
Under The Bombs (cert TBC)
(SOUS LES BOMBES)
A film by PHILIPPE ARACTINGI
WINNER Premio EIUC Human Rights Film Award & ARCA Cinemagiovani Award
(ARCA Prize for Youths) - Venice Film Festival 2007
WINNER Gold Muhr Award - Dubai International Film Festival 2007
Starring
Nada Abou Farhat, Georges Khabbaz & Rawya El Chab
France, Lebanon, UK, Belgium / 2007 / 98 Mins / In Arabic with English Subtitles / Colour / 1.85
UK RELEASE DATE: 21 MARCH 2008 TBC
Opening at selected West End Venues
and selected cinemas nationwide
An Artificial Eye Release
Images are available on image.net
For further information please contact: press@artificial-eye.com
Artificial Eye Film Company, 20 - 22 Stukeley Street London WC2B 5LR
The 2006 war in Lebanon comes to the cinema. UNDER THE BOMBS, which won the Premio EIUC Human Rights Film Award and ARCA Cinemagiovani Award at the 64th Venice Film Festival, is not only a film on the war but also a film inside the war. Shot during the Israeli bombing of the south of the country, the film by Philippe Aractingi is a documentary, a love story, a work of civil commitment and is the first testimony of the latest Lebanese conflict to be taken to the big screen. The film is almost an experiment; it was started without producers, without a script, only with some scenes shot in the summer of 2006, and has become a documentary of 90 minutes where fiction melds with reality.
Zeina is a Lebanese woman in the middle of a divorce. In order to spare her son, Karim, she sends him to stay with her sister in a little village in the South of Lebanon. One week later, the war breaks out in Lebanon. Terribly worried, she goes to Lebanon to find them, but only one taxi-driver, Toni, agrees to drive her to the South. Zeina and Toni are far from sharing the same political views - he is Christian and she is a Shiite,
but they drive south together, into a landscape devastated by bombs. When they finally reach the house of Zeina’s sister, they realize they are too late: it has been hit, and only a pile of rubble remains. Zeina’s sister is dead. Ali, a kid from the village, comes forward to tell them that her son Karim is safe but has left the village. So begins Zeina and Tony’s search for her son with devastating results….
"In the beginning we shot only material on the war, then we found producers and then we wrote a script with the actors working together with ordinary people whom they met on the streets while we were filming
"The entire work on the film, from the search for producers to post production, lasted only one year…I was so angry about the umpteenth conflict which brought destruction and death to my country that I shot the entire material from an instinct which was pushing me to say something in a hurry.
"I wanted to make a film about the war and the only way for me to do that was to use reality "
• Philippe Aractingi.
Of Franco-Lebanese origin, Philippe Aractingi was born in 1964 in Beirut where he grew up. He has made more than 40 films, around the world, ranging from reports and documentaries to more personal films. Self taught and a humanist, Philippe Aractingi spent 12 years in France before returning to his native Lebanon to make BOSTA, the country’s first post war musical. BOSTA, a huge success in Lebanon and all over the Arab world, has been released in over twenty countries. It was selected to represent Lebanon at the 2006 Oscars Academy Award. In July 2006, as war once again ravaged his country, Philippe Aractingi reacted, in the heat of the moment, by shooting his second feature film: UNDER THE BOMBS.
Bloody Lebanon recap
---------------------------------------------------------
Dec 12 - Car bomb kills Brigadier General Francois al-Hajj, the army's head of operations, and a bodyguard in a Christian town east of Beirut. He had been tipped to become the next army chief.
Jan 15, 2008 - A car bomb attack in a Christian area of Beirut kills at least three people and wounds 16, in an explosion that damaged a U.S. embassy car and destroyed others.
Jan 25 - Wisam Eid, a captain in a Lebanese police intelligence unit, is killed in a bomb explosion in mainly Christian east Beirut. At least five other people die in the attack. (Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit)
on Feb. 14, 2005. Feb. 16, 2005 - At least 150,000 Lebanese turn Hariri's funeral into outpouring of anger against Syria.
Feb. 28 - Pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karami resigns.
March 5 - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad tells his parliament Syrian troops will start phased pullout from Lebanon.
April 26 - Last Syrian soldiers leave Lebanon.
June 2 - Samir Kassir, journalist opposed to Syria's role in Lebanon, is killed in Beirut by a bomb in his car.
June 16 - U.N. investigation into Hariri's killing starts.
June 19 - Lebanese parliamentary elections end in victory for anti-Syrian alliance led by Hariri's son Saad al-Hariri.
June 21 - Former Communist Party leader and critic of Syria George Hawi is killed in Beirut by a bomb in his car.
Oct. 20 - U.N. investigators say high-ranking Syrian officials and their Lebanese allies were involved in Hariri's killing, in report to U.N. Security Council. Syria denies it.
Dec. 12 - Gebran Tueni, anti-Syrian member of parliament and Lebanese newspaper magnate, is killed by a car bomb near Beirut.
July 12, 2006 - Hezbollah captures two Israeli soldiers in cross-border raid, setting off 34-day war in which about 1,200 people in Lebanon and 158 Israelis are killed.
Nov. 11 - Five pro-Syrian Shi'ite Muslim ministers from Hezbollah and its ally, the Amal movement, resign after collapse of all-party talks on giving their camp more say in government.
Nov. 21 - Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel is killed by gunmen. U.N. Security Council approves plans for tribunal to try suspects in assassination of Hariri and subsequent attacks.
Dec. 1 - Hezbollah, Amal and supporters of Christian leader Michel Aoun camp outside Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's office in central Beirut in open-ended campaign to topple government.
Jan. 25, 2007 - Aid conference in Paris pledges more than $7.6 billion to help Lebanon with its mountain of debt and to recover from the war.
Feb. 13 - Three people are killed in two bomb blasts near a Christian village northeast of Beirut. Lebanon says in March four Syrians confessed to the bombings and were members of Fatah al-Islam, a small Palestinian group linked to Syrian intelligence. The group deny involvement.
March 8/9 - Talks between Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, also leader of the opposition Amal movement, and majority leader Saad al-Hariri to solve the four-month-old power struggle end without agreement.
May 17 - The United States, France and Britain circulate a draft U.N. resolution that would unilaterally establish a tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 Hariri murder.
May 20 - Lebanese troops battle Sunni Islamist militants based in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp killing at least 50 people.
June 12 - Heavy fighting continues to rage at the Nahr al-Bared camp during which at least 136 people, including 60 soldiers, have been killed since the battles started.
June 13 - Anti-Syrian parliamentarian Walid Eido is killed with at least seven other people in a blast on Beirut's seafont.
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Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Lebanon postpones vote yet again
The pro-West ruling bloc and pro-Syrian opposition have agreed on army chief Gen Michel Suleiman, but are divided on the make-up of the new government.
There is also said to be a dispute over how to amend the constitution to allow a senior civil servant to be elected.
The deadlock meant Emile Lahoud stepped down last month without a successor.
Under Article 49 of the current constitution, senior civil servants like Gen Suleiman are barred from becoming president within two years of stepping down.
Deadlock
Under Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing system, the country's president must be from the Maronite Christian minority, while the prime minister must be a Sunni Muslim and the president of parliament a Shia.
Gen Suleiman, who is a Maronite, left a meeting with the Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, on Monday without making any comment.
The deadlock over the president is Lebanon's worst political crisis since the country's long civil war ended in 1990.
The economy and parliament have been crippled, and the opposition have refused to recognise the government.
Correspondents say Gen Suleiman has remained neutral amid feuding between the government and opposition, and has repeatedly called for the army to be kept out of politics.
The governing coalition needs a two-thirds majority to elect the president, or 86 of the 128 MPs, but holds only 68 seats
Published: 2007/12/10 23:57:28 GMT
© BBC MMVII
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Kouchner Back In Beirut to Help Settle Presidential Crisis
Kouchner held talks talks with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri for one hour and left without making any statement to reporters. He also discussed with al-Moustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri "efforts exerted to hold the presidemtial elections," according to a statement released by the Hariri Press office.
The French official also met Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun in Rabye, according to the National News agency.
Kouchner's visit comes ahead of a parliament session on Friday for lawmakers to elect a new head of state to replace Emile Lahoud, the former pro-Syrian president who stepped down at midnight on November 23 at the end of his term.
But there was wide speculation that the session -- the seventh since September -- would once again be delayed amid lingering disputes between the ruling majority and the pro-Syrian opposition.
France, Lebanon's former colonial power, has been leading international efforts to end a political crisis that emerged a year ago when six opposition ministers quit Saniora's government, plunging the country into disarray.
Kouchner's visit is the seventh by the French official to Lebanon in six months and comes as negotiations among Beirut's feuding politicians have homed in on the army chief, General Michel Suleiman, to succeed Lahoud.
The general was formally endorsed by the ruling majority on Sunday while the Aoun-led opposition has not made a firm commitment.
Aoun, himself a former army chief, said he would back Suleiman for the top job only if he held the office until legislative election in 2009, instead of the full six-year term stipulated by the constitution.
In any case, Suleiman's election requires a change to the constitution as Article 49 bars public servants from assuming the presidency within two years of stepping down from their posts.
Six sessions in parliament to elect a successor to Lahoud have already been postponed because of the bickering between the parties.
"Friday's presidential election is at the mercy of the political bazaar," the French-language L'Orient Le Jour, which is close to the ruling majority, said in a banner headline on Tuesday.
The pro-opposition daily Al-Akhbar also expected Friday's vote to be postponed. "The presidential election is once again facing complications despite the agreement between the opposition and majority on Suleiman," the daily said.(Naharnet-AFP)
Beirut, 04 Dec 07, 18:13
"a viewpoint that remains personal"
By Dalia Nehme
The head of Hizbullah's parliamentary bloc MP Mohammed Raad said Wednesday Prime Minister Fouad Saniora's majority government does not have the authority to propose a constitutional amendment allowing the election of Army Commander Gen. Michel Suleiman president.
Noting that he is voicing "a viewpoint that remains personal," Raad told Naharnet: "To me, at the personal level, I believe a constitutional amendment in parliament is possible after resignation of Fouad Saniora from the government which is neither constitutional nor legitimate."
"Parliament cannot meet with a non-constitutional government. I am not making a proposal, but expressing a view point that remains personal."
However, Raad stressed that "we will not block any consensus possibility if the intro to it is a constitutional amendment, provided that all opposition factions have agreed on it."
In answering a question as to whether the Hizbullah parliamentary bloc will attend a session to amend the constitution, Raad said: "We believe that any constitutional amendment will be fabrication based on tacit approval by both the pro-government factions and the opposition due to an extraordinary and very important matter."
"This issue should be discussed in detail by the opposition," he added.
What would your stand be if amending the constitution to elect Gen. Suleiman is the only salvation solution? Raad was asked.
He replied: "In fact, this issue needs to be judged to realize its seriousness in the candidate-proposing formula, and to know if the other side considers it the salvation solution."
He recalled that Saniora had "pledged to chop off his hand before signing a constitutional amendment decree. If he is ready now to chop off his hand lets discuss this issue," Raad added.
"We see no seriousness in tackling this issue, some (factions) are trying to maneuver by throwing the ball into the other side's court."
Raad said Gen. Suleiman "knows well our stand regarding him, we explained our stand to him in details a long time ago. And when nominating him is proposed seriously we'll discuss the topic."
He asked "why wasn't (suleiman's nomination) in the basked on candidates. Is constitutional amendment possible now, from a constitutional point of view? And who amends the constitution now? A non-constitutional government, and a parliament that doesn't meet with this non-constitutional government? This issue requires a discussion."
In answering a question as to whether nominating Gen. Suleiman could be proposed as a salvation exit out of the ongoing political crisis, Raad replied:
"If the opposition adopted this view point, then why not. But the opposition might not adopt this view point … This issue requires a decision. But this government is neither legal nor constitutional, how can it be entrusted with a constitutional amendment … in the first place it does not exist as far as we are concerned. Amending the constitution requires a two-thirds vote by a legal government so that a decree can be referred to parliament.
"Parliament does not accept illegitimate decrees by the illegitimate government."
Raad concluded by asking: "does the extraordinary situation prevailing over the country require us to surmount all these issues and the constitutional mechanism to amend the constitution?"
"I don't know, though I find it to be difficult," he replied.
Raad said Hizbullah's presidential candidate is Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun "or whoever is chosen by Gen. Aoun."
"It will be difficult to agree on any candidate of whom Gen. Aoun is not convinced," Raad added, stressing that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri "realizes this."
He said "pressure cards" of the majority have "faded away and collapsed. The pro-government team would find itself obliged to seriously accept a compromise."
Raad said any protest organized by Aoun would be coordinated with all the opposition factions, noting that the people are "suffering from economic hardships and the increase in prices of basic commodities."
"This requires serious and thorough handling that can only be available through intact rule," Raad added.
He accused the United States of aborting a French initiative to elect a consensus president before Nov. 23 when former President Emile Lahoud's extended term in office expired.
Syria, he said, "played a positive role and did not interfere in naming candidates and supported consensus on a candidate."
Raad warned that electing a president by simple majority, an option that the majority had pledged to resort to, "would open the door to chaos in the country."
The majority, Raad added, "can maintain this option for as long as they want, but can they practice it?"
Hizbullah, he said, wants a president who enjoys "Christian popularity and who strongly believes in Lebanon's strength and would be ready to maintain the national balance."
Raad said the peace conference hosted by U.S. President George Bush at Annapolis gave nothing to the Palestinians and the Arabs, while Israel was labeled a Jewish state and the Israelis did not make a commitment to halt the building of settlements or the "wall of isolation."
Israel, he said, "insisted on dealing with the Palestinian Authority through the road map, the starting phase of which insists on starting a Palestinian civil war through what the Israelis term ending terrorist operations."
The Arabs who took part in the meeting went to Annapolis "empty handed and proposed the Arab (peace) initiative that the Israeli enemy did not even accept to discuss."
Beirut, 28 Nov 07, 17:28
Iraqis 'left to rot' in Lebanon
New York-based Human Rights Watch says hundreds of Iraqi refugees face the prospect of "rotting in jail" unless they agree to return home.
About 50,000 Iraqis are thought to have fled violence and instability in Iraq to the relative safety of Lebanon.
HRW says at least 500 Iraqi refugees are in jail in Lebanon and 150 were expelled in the first half of 2007.
Its report Rot Here or Die There: Bleak Choices for Iraqi Refugees in Lebanon urges the authorities to ease restrictions on Iraqis and grant them temporary legal status.
"By giving Iraqi refugees no option but to stay in jail indefinitely or return to Iraq, Lebanon is violating the bedrock principle of international law," said HRW refugee policy director Bill Frelick.
A Lebanese official quoted by AFP said the country did not offer special treatment for Iraqis, but did offer residency to anyone who qualified for it.
Lebanon never signed the 1951 UN convention on refugees. For decades its politics has been dominated by finely balanced sectarianism, which analysts say makes it hyper-sensitive to demographic changes caused by influxes of refugees.
More than 2.5 million Iraqis are refugees, most of them in neighbouring Syria and Jordan and at least 2 million more are internally displaced.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Lebanon president deadline looms
 President Lahoud wants to appoint an army chief as his successor |
However, mediators fear rival camps will fail to reach a deal, plunging the country into a deeper political crisis.
Repeated attempts to elect a new president over the past two months have been scuppered by rivalry between Western-backed and pro-Syrian factions.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who has been trying to broker a solution, said despite complications "a miracle is still possible".
But his Italian counterpart, Massimo D'Alema, was pessimistic on the eve of Friday's deadline.
"Tomorrow, I don't believe there will be an election and this will create difficult conditions," he said.
The French, Italian and Spanish foreign ministers have spent several days in Lebanon, meeting rival groups in an attempt to break the deadlock.
A vote in parliament has been scheduled for 1300 (1100 GMT), 11 hours before current President Emile Lahoud's term expires.
No compromise
The election of a president requires a two-thirds majority, which means that the anti-Syrian ruling bloc - with its slim majority - cannot force its preferred candidate through parliament. A deal with the opposition is therefore required.
The rival factions cannot agree on a compromise candidate, however.
And the opposition has warned it may boycott Friday's session, thus ensuring the quorum will not be reached and any vote will be invalid.
According to Article 62 of the Lebanese constitution, if no candidate is elected before Mr Lahoud's mandate expires, his powers are automatically transferred to the anti-Syrian government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
However, President Lahoud has vowed not to hand over power to Mr Siniora, and said he would name army chief General Michel Suleiman as his provisional successor instead.
Opposition leader Michel Aoun proposed a compromise on Thursday, whereby an interim president would be selected to fill the office until parliamentary elections were held in 2009.
This was dismissed by the ruling majority, however, which said the plan was unconstitutional.
The political deadlock has already led to the vote being postponed four times since 25 September.
The BBC's Kim Ghattas in Beirut says the failure to find a compromise has raised fears of civil strife, including the possibility that the opposition could create a rival administration, as happened during the civil war.
International efforts
Our correspondent says the issue is turning into a regional and international affair.
The US, Russia, Syria and Iran are all intensely involved and there has been a lot of diplomatic shuttling between Damascus, Moscow, Tehran and Paris.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned several of the country's top leaders on Monday.
Fears are growing that failure to elect a president will bring more turmoil to Lebanon.
The army has increased its presence on the streets of Beirut and set up checkpoints, some schools have cancelled classes until Monday, and the ministry of interior has suspended all firearm permits until further notice.
