Ghassan Salhab
Lebanon | 2007 | 28 min
Language : Arabic
Subtitle : English
Not long after the Israeli attack of 2006, Ghassan Salhab directed this filmic essay; its images are both absent and present witnesses to an unexpected war. A cinematographic musing on contemporary Lebanon and a wager on the impossibility of recounting the violence of a bruised country, whose ghosts reappear from the ruins and stare at the screen, before disappearing in cross-fade.
After the void, a face appears on the screen, looking at the camera and thus at the audience. It is as if the face sprang out of the rubble of a post-war city, like the city we are exploring here. These images are juxtaposed with those from television news, thus blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, between what we see and what we are allowed to see. Not long after the Israeli attack of 2006, Ghassan Salhab directed this film essay which unquestionably bears the unique stamp of its author; its images are both absent and present witnesses to an unexpected war. (Posthume) is a genuine contemporary elegy, reminding us of the differences between what happens within us and outside. Salhab offers up a cinematographic musing on Lebanon and a wager on the impossibility of recounting the violence of a bruised country, whose ghosts reappear from the ruins and stare at the screen, before disappearing in cross-fade.
Jasmin Basic
