Maroun Baghdadi – Eye on the East

April 12, 2025April 12, 2025

“Between Amnesty and Amnesia”: Remembering the 50th Anniversary of Lebanon’s Civil War

How much more is there left for us, not the history books, to say about the Lebanese civil war? Quite a lot, apparently.

Earlier this year, Lebanon-based “Agenda Culturel” launched its “Between Amnesty and Amnesia, where is the Memory of the Civil War?” series, gathering testimonies through seven questions centered on personal experiences and how memories of the war are still reflected in our lives, identity, traumas and aspirations for this country’s future. I really did not think I had more to say about the war, any more than I already have, nor even wanted to. But these questions made me realize that there were still things I wanted to share. So long as we, as a country – as we are far from being a nation – fail to remember in order to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, we will all still have much to say about what erupted on April 13, 1975.

May 7, 2016

When looking back hurts, really hurts

Late Lebanese legendary filmmaker Maroun Baghdadi once said, “I come from a world where, strangely enough, the image has difficulty in spreading. It’s a world that has problems with its own image.” He went on to say that in Lebanon and the Arab world, the image can be considered a taboo, complaining that he had been sometimes accused of giving a “bad image” of the region in his movies. “This excites me,” he lashed back, “and encourages me to transmit my message through images even more.” Continue reading “When looking back hurts, really hurts”