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 Introduction to the end of an
argument Up to the South This is not Beirut |
A conceptual, but not thereby less clearly recognizable attack on the way the Western media presents Arabian culture, the Middle East and the Palestinian people as a distorting lie which has to pass for the objective truth. In Introduction to the end of an argument, Salloum and Sulleiman take a shot at the Western media's image of the Arab world. In this militant combination of American, European and Israeli film fragments, excerpts from documentaries and TV news and specially filmed footage of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1988, it becomes clear how repeated falsifications are transformed unnoticed into a 'genuine' foreign policy. Up to the South relies entirely on the spoken word: religious leaders, fighters, politicians, housewives and other citizens and victims of the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon give accounts of terrorism and of the devious way the Western media repeatedly succeeds in demonizing Arab victims as aggressors. But it is precisely through their very obviously partisan voice that this series of talking heads likewise offers a keen comment on the historically 'objective' aspirations of the traditional documentary. In This is not Beirut, Salloum examines the 'Lebanization' of both the 'Switzerland of the Middle East' and the world of television itself. On the basis of a chameleonic analysis, this kaleidoscopic collage (of found footage and post cards) demonstrates how, in the dramatized, personalized and simplified media reporting, the truth becomes permanently ensnared in a web of distorted facts, mystification, tautologies and contradictions. |
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 History and Memory |
 Heidi |
 Fade to Black |
 No other Possibility |
 Superstar |
 Videogramme einer Revolution |
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