Memory Box

Winners of the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2017, filmmakers and artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (I Want to See, The Lebanese Rocket Society) question the role of memory in creating images and historical narratives. The pair has always shown an interest in the emotional processes associated with the trauma of war, and this time Joana’s own journals and tapes from 1982 to 1988 and Khalil’s wartime photographs build the story of Maia and Alex.

Maia lives in Montreal with her teenage daughter Alex. On Christmas Eve, she receives a box containing the journals, tapes and photos that she had entrusted to her best friend when she left Lebanon. She refuses to open this Pandora’s box, but Alex cannot resist the temptation and unveils her mother’s troubled adolescence spent in wartime Beirut.

The screening on 21 Jan (7.15pm) will be followed by a discussion with directors Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige and Marta Weiss, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum

From 21 Jan

See also the reading group on Beirut 2020: The Collapse of a Civilization by Charif Majdalani

Get cheap film tickets with the 25 and Under Scheme at Ciné Lumière