As Lebanon marked this month the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war 30 years ago, Iman Hamam discusses images of the war in film. Concentrating on Maroun Baghdadi's Little Wars, she traces the dichotomy of normal and abnormal, the collapse of the individual, and the pain and madness of war The Syrians watched impassively as one of the Christian [Phalange] gunmen produced a camera, the kind of small pocket camera that might be given to a child as a Christmas present. Then the Christians stood up in front of their barricade and put their arms round each other's shoulders. They faced the camera in their dungarees and jeans and cowboy-style holsters and knee high boots. Two of them put on paper hats which bore the sign of the swastika. A third held out a crucifix. And there, in from of their destroyed city, they had their photograph taken, like a picture for a school magazine. The front line was thus immortalised, firmly affixed to their own existence, a part of them, something to be recalled with nostalgia, something to be understood and wondered at. Then they walked solemnly away. (Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation) If a film named Beirut Ya Beirut was screened on the eve of the Lebanese civil war, the chances are that it would suggest something was in the air. Shown on 10 April 1975 in a small cineclub near what would soon become one of the khtout al-tamas (the dividing lines along which the war was fought in Beirut), the film's premiere took place exactly three days before the Ain Al-Romana bus attack, which set the war in motion; it would never be officially released. Maroun Baghdadi, the filmmaker in question, went on to make, among other films, Kamal Junblat, (he was the last filmmaker to meet the Druze leader before his assassination in 1977), Nu'eimeh (a documentary about the Lebanese poet Michael Nu'eimeh), Love All for the Homeland and, notably, Little Wars, before he was found dead on the stairs of his building in 1994; many suspect he was a belated casualty of the war. To some extent, Baghdadi's work shares the archival obsessions of such filmmakers as Akram Zaatari and Mohamed Soueid, who document images and experience of the war, or at least the traces it left behind. In Sonalla Ibrahim's novel Beirut Beirut (1984), a record of the same period is presented through the eyes of a visitor, as an Egyptian journalist encounters a Lebanese woman making a documentary about the war. Ibrahim incorporates her material into his text -- a typical strategy. Keeping its title in mind, one cannot help wonder if the novel is a tribute to Baghdadi. Since Beirut Ya Beirut, few Lebanese films have failed to take account of the war, though one should bear in mind that, while this is a significant factor in the formation of Lebanese cinema, it by no means constitutes it. In a recent article published in Al-Hayat, Kadhem Al-Amin argued that the political, economic and social fragmentation depicted in Beirut Ya Beirut and Bourhane Alaouie's Kafr Kassem signalled a new era in Lebanese film, paving the way for directors like Jean Chamaoun, Heiny Srour, Randa Shahal and Jocelyne Saab. Emerging from diverse backgrounds, these make up a "war generation" whose films either reflect on the aftermath of war in an attempt to counter the nation's subsequent amnesia, or present "everyday" experiences during the war -- tendencies exemplified by Saab's Once Upon a Time, Beirut and Ziad Doueri's West Beirut, respectively. As Mark Westmoreland has pointed out, "Lebanese Cinema has now become the thing of dreams, both as part of a general desire for national revival and as a medium to tell the untold stories of war and suffering." But what could everyday life in Lebanon during the civil war possibly look like in film? Certainly Baghdadi's Little Wars seems to present an answer to this question. According to an Internet biography of Baghdadi (arabicnews.com), the film "concentrates on the absurdity and uselessness of war which runs counter and contrary to the interests and dreams of the ordinary Lebanese, the poor and those who take no sides". Made prior to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut -- another turning point in the 15-year battle -- Little Wars highlights the "complexity" of the war (who's fighting who and why) in a climatic depiction of the relationship between three main characters: Soraya, Talal and Nabil. Overall, the film demonstrates how each is sucked into little battles, petty wars perhaps, despite their best intentions to remain uninvolved. It opens with a group of university students mourning the death of their friend Fouad. Having passed around his portrait, they discuss his last days. Fouad had become withdrawn: finding the hizb (in this case a party of young left-wing radicals) to be no refuge, he immersed himself in music and drugs. What could have led him to such misery -- nihilism and suicide? Perhaps this is the true subject of the film. It is a depiction of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances in which everyday life turns surreal. On hearing that his father, a high ranking politician, has been kidnapped -- or more likely killed -- Talal returns to his family home in the Bekaa Valley and begins to train as a fighter. Back in Beirut, Soraya meets Nabil, a photographer and member of a group of young musicians and fighters. Suspecting that she is pregnant, desperate and worried about Talal, Soraya asks Nabil for a "small favour" -- to help her reach the Bekaa. Increasingly concerned about Talal's involvement in the war, she organises a kidnapping, again with the help of Nabil and his friends, so as to trade the hostage for Talal's father. But Nabil, who is seriously indebted to his drug dealer Shawky, decides to sell the hostage in order to pay off his debt. The plan goes horribly wrong, however: the hostage is killed, Nabil's friends shot and, as bombs explode around them, Nabil is left calling out Soraya's name. The events culminate in a showdown between Nabil and Talal -- a scene straight out of a Western: Talal is wearing a white suit, Nabil a black one; they stand facing each other, 10 strides apart, in an open courtyard, surrounded by derelict buildings. The viewer never sees the outcome, but gun shots are heard. Given the ambiguity of the closing, the film can by no means be reduced to a single narrative storyline. Most significantly, the narrative is characterised by the existence of consistent, relentless (not-so-little?) climaxes that occur throughout the film. Parallels between camera and gun abound, Baghdadi's Little Wars highlights this aspect in the presence of an American film crew shooting in downtown Beirut. The American director states (in response to his cameraman's objections that they did get a shot of the sniper), "I don't feel like we got the shot, I don't feel it." The director clicks his fingers, thinking fast: "We need people in the street." A militiaman dressed in green, complete with moustache, sunglasses and hat says, "Get real, there's shooting taking place here." Frustrated, Nabil shouts, "If he wants shooting, I'll give him shooting." He runs across the courtyard, sniper shots come raining down -- he makes it across, the crew cheers, and he runs back. In the scene that follows an interview is taking place. Soraya's friend (who she happens to be accompanying) is interviewing militiamen. A battle ensues over who will answer the question: one wants to provide a political analysis, the other action-packed details. The conversation breaks down with Soraya in the middle of the group, speechless and unable to participate. In a later scene the American film crew are filming a man holding a gun against a blindfolded hostage. The director asks, "What's he saying?" She doesn't answer -- he is annoyed. "Miss, we're filming here, can you translate, please?" The image of the blindfolded hostage and Soraya's speechlessness together generate the capacity to witness or engage in the events taking place. This is articulated most clearly through the presence of blind -- and blindfolded -- characters, who seem to bear the brunt of most of the absurdity. Nabil's friend Hassan, caught in a shootout with the drug dealers, is rushed to hospital. Brandishing their guns, the group charge into the hospital and demand a doctor and immediate medication for their friend lying agonised on a stretcher. The intensity of the moment collapses as someone throws an object across the room. Everyone falls to the ground in a panic, then they collapse in laughter. Later, the group are playing guitar and dancing in Hassan's hospital room before they decide to use their guns to get him out. He remains with the group throughout the film, absurdly participating in the kidnapping only to discover, on removing his bandages, that he has been permanently blinded. The immediate re-enactment of the kidnapping through the eyes of its participants in a surreal fantasy sequence draws attention to questions of perspective: amidst the surrealism, one asks, whose realism is being presented? Like Hassan and Soraya's blind uncle, the spectators are granted their own perspective, however fragmented it turns out to be. Their presence is absurd, but no less so than the events taking place around them, and their blindness cannot detach or distance them in any way. The desire to stay "outside" the war is unattainable. By virtue of their being present, the characters are necessarily involved, and frequently forced to participate on the war's terms, not their own. The position of the photographer, for example, is clearly marked -- he is someone involved in the surroundings, rejecting suggestions of any distance obtained through the apparatus he deploys. After the interview breaks down, Nabil walks off to take some pictures. He gives the militiamen some orders in an attempt to get them to pose. "Stand straight, hold up the gun," he says. As he takes the shot, however, all the men simultaneously change their pose and smile. Initially composed, the group rearrange themselves in a flash. The scene draws attention to the photographer's inability to control or hold together the images he captures. In Nabil's case, the distinction between observer and participant quickly breaks down. As the events draw to a close, he stands in an empty apartment taking photographs of himself. Later he sits in his apartment with the walls covered from floor to ceiling with head shots of himself. Underneath is written: "the martyr Nabil Srour". Here, parallels emerge between Nabil and Fouad, both drug addicts, both involved with music. Against their will they are both sucked into a nihilism that carries little political significance, their martyrs' posters rendered meaningless and out of place in relation to their lives. The film connects with Elias Khoury's novel The White Faces, in which someone secretly and obsessively erases the features from the martyrs' posters pasted on the walls of the city by night. The title Little Wars also draws attention to the film's portrayal of children (also developed in the documentaries of Mai Masri), where images of childhood are perhaps the most out of place and surreal. The first child, an unnamed little girl, enters the room of an empty apartment taking Nabil -- who is listening to Abdel-Halim Hafez -- by surprise. Nabil points his gun at her and she backs out. Later the girl witnesses her father opening the door of the apartment to one of Shawky's gunmen; mistaken for Nabil, the father is shot where he stands. The other child, a little boy whom one of the group members is meant to be babysitting, plays with a ball in the middle of the street as they carry out the kidnapping. He is bundled into the Mercedes with Soraya, Nabil and the others (including their blinded friend Hassan). These two depictions of children are by no means crudely sentimental or nostalgic. Rather, the image is one of desperation and absurdity. Since we know the adult characters, the film demonstrates how their lives -- their games -- cross over and intermingle. Small requests, emotions and desires are played out in the context of a grown up battle of differences. When boundaries and battle lines are drawn and redrawn in the context of war, it becomes necessary for those who wish to live, move and remain in touch with others to seek to cross them, suffering the consequences in the process. Little Wars spares us the gruesome brutality that we know characterised Lebanon's civil war for 15 years, and leaves us rather, with a desperate portrayal of those destroyed.
