Joachim Michaux
Sur tes cendres - Film - 2021
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 23
Film
Lebanon, August 2020. The explosion in the port of Beirut confronts Yasmeen and her father with the silences of their past. In this quest for reconstruction we can picture their relation to violence and to their country’s tormented history.
My entrance into Lebanon was through my encounter with Yasmeen Baz, a young Lebanese producer of electronic music, and with her father Patrick. It is through their inner voices that I try to paint a sensitive and subjective portrait of contemporary Lebanon. I also witnessed the gradual emergence of a third character, the city of Beirut, which is constantly being destroyed and rebuilt, and which carries within itself the heritage of their past. Beyond a confrontation between inner truth and objective reality, this film is a reflection on violence and interrogates the need to see and produce images of destruction, thereby echoing the war photojournalism of Patrick Baz.
