Cinema
A Hundred Faces for a Single Day
مئة وجه ليوم واحد
Christian Ghazi · 1972
Synopsis
Several disjointed plots intersect and overlap: the bourgeoisie of Beirut, apathetic and hypocritical, its salons and bars, a misogynist ideologue, and facing them the rank-and-file fighters, including a fedayee whom the camera follows from above across rocky terrain. The radio crackles from beginning to end, and a voice-over quotes a poem about roses to celebrate resistance through direct action.
Context
Shot on sixteen millimetre, the film runs barely an hour; its author regarded it as his personal manifesto. The soundtrack is deliberately jarring, so that the viewer does not settle in. Co-produced by the Palestinian Film Foundation, it is written with Micheline Daou, Madonna Ghazi and Salah Moukhallati, who act in it alongside Jalal Khoury and Raymond Gebara. It is the only film by its author to have survived: the print, found in an archive in Damascus, was returned to him.
Who it is for
In Arabic, with English subtitles; an hour without a continuous narrative, where the editing and the sound are designed to disorient.
Prizes and reception
The only surviving film of a destroyed body of work, screened since then at festivals in Europe and the Middle East.
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