Contretemps, your sprawling video essay presented last year at FID, focused on the Lebanese uprising of 2019 and its subsequent decline, and ended with car tracking shots through South Lebanon. No title documents the devastation of southern Beirut and South Lebanon by Israeli airstrikes. Would it be fair to see No title as an extension of Contretemps? What drove you to get in the car and make this new film?
Since I finished editing Contretemps, it’s been an infernal chain of events—the massacres, the never-ending genocide in Gaza, the incessant bombings in Lebanon, first “targeted”, then full-blown war in October–November 2024, the near-daily attacks by the Israeli army since the so-called ceasefire…
I did film after Contretemps—mostly at night—and the constant overflight of Beirut by enemy drones, but I only really began filming with this essay in mind from January this year. “With it in mind”—more or less, because I kept questioning myself. Was I even legitimate? I went several times to the southern districts of Beirut and to the south of the country, beginning with the village my father came from—first checking the state of his grave, since the building above the cemetery had been bombed.
Let’s just say I have this reflex of filming from a car, with someone else driving. When I get out of the car, I film far less. Perhaps I need to be in motion—I don’t know. I didn’t want to film the people I met directly, the people I know, their distress… I couldn’t put a camera between us.
The film is made up mostly of long forward tracking shots winding through ruins in the city and then in the destroyed villages. As these shots unfold, the muteness of No title becomes striking. One word, “here”, which doesn’t really say anything, is repeated three times. Can you comment on this silence and the repetition of “here”?
What is there left to say? This isn’t the first time I’ve “witnessed” disaster. From our internal calamities, civil and uncivil, to the repeated assaults and wars waged by Israel… What can be said after nearly two years of witnessing the relentless drive of this killing machine?
I’ve carried the word “here” for a long time—not in opposition to “elsewhere”, but perhaps to convey the reality of a place, a geography under attack, and where I live. It’s also about what it means in the immediate present.
Can you describe and comment on the film’s trajectory—from the streets of Beirut to the ruined gates of Khiam prison camp, where Israel held political prisoners during its occupation of South Lebanon?
Israel continues to occupy five elevated border posts in the south…
To be precise, I filmed various routes through what’s known as the southern suburbs of Beirut, which have endured more than one bombing—home to around half a million people, including some of my acquaintances. I also filmed several journeys into the country’s south, approaching the border. Long takes, often, always with my phone camera. Each time with a friend driving.
When we entered the city of Khiam, which is almost entirely destroyed, I instinctively gestured to my friend Ashraf to take the right fork in the road. I didn’t know it would lead straight to the gates of the former detention camp… It’s a strange thing, filming your own disaster.
Between the film’s two main movements, there’s a long nocturnal passage filled with the howling of animals, ending with an image and text about Mount Hermon, whose snow-covered summit appears on the horizon. What does this passage through the night represent, and what does it mean to emerge from it via this landscape and that mountain, far off in the distance?
The night—more than one, in fact—was just before and during the all-out war of October-November 2024. Just before, I was in a mountain area I love to visit in the Chouf, southeast of Beirut, and enemy fighter jets flew constantly overhead, on their way to bomb the Bekaa or the south…
Did I really emerge from it? The landscape, inevitably, as always, when I need to catch my breath—and that other mountain, Mount Hermon, with all its historical and mythical weight, at the intersection of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine… You can see it from the village my friend Ashraf is from—a village that produces one of the best olive oils in the country.
Can you talk about the sound design? The rich, textured soundscape of the film’s urban first part is striking, as is the prominence of the sound of the Israeli drone—identified in a caption as the “Heron Mk2”. What were your guiding principles when crafting the film’s sound?
There’s first that richly layered piece by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, which opens in darkness. I only used sounds from my own video recordings and phone recordings I made during the two months of full-scale war.
The drone’s sound is an everyday reality—sometimes so present it feels as if it’s hovering right above us. Still today.
Palestinians in Gaza know better than anyone just how abominable that sound is…
My only guiding principle was to work from this raw material I had. My friend Victor Bresse, who had already helped me on Contretemps, distributed this material spatially –fully understanding that nothing should be added. No escalation.
The film ends on a caption that sadly remains relevant: “still today”. A phrase marking an ongoing disaster whose end is unimaginable. A disaster that you insist on documenting or sharing visually—whether through your “videos” like No title, or your regular contributions to political sites like lundimatin, and also daily on Instagram. Images—visibility through images—are at once despairing and necessary, perhaps the only possible response to powerlessness. What is your feeling about that?
If only you could hear my long, deep sigh… Akh, as we say here, when we no longer know how to express our grief.
I don’t know whether the images, my various texts, my different interventions are a form of resistance –or if they don’t in fact say even more about this terrible powerlessness.
The disaster is ongoing, unending, as you say—like quicksand. Nothing gives us any distance…
No Title –why this untitled title?
I borrowed it directly from the latest album by Godspeed You! Black Emperor: NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 – 28,340 DEAD. The band is clearly referring to Gaza.
In Arabic, No Title also means “without address”. No Title, perhaps like saying No comment.
Interview by Cyril Neyrat
