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06/15/2010 - 06/15/2010 | Beirut

The Work of Nostalgia in Lebanese Film

Lecture by Prof. Dr. Ken Seigneurie | Simon Fraser University, Canada

In his paper, Prof. Ken Seigneurie will trace the emergence of a new aesthetic in Lebanese films of the civil war (1975-1990) and postwar. After a brief outline of the historically dominant function of nostalgia in Lebanese feature film, he shows how its function changes during the first years of the war.

The major claim is that filmakers reappropriate the classical Arabic wuquf 'ala al-atlal ("standing by the ruins") literary topos and its nostalgic structures of feeling. The paper will examine how this topos provides a privileged point of entry into exploring the war's anomie and psychological traumas.

While this reinflection of cinematic practice in Lebanese feature film varies interestingly from film to film and even within individual films, typically the protagonist beholds war ruins in the calm after a traumatic incident and remembers loved ones or the prewar. In the juxtaposition of present despair and erstwhile peace, the protagonist conjures an ethical standpoint sharply at variance with wartime sectarianism. The contemporary reappropriation of the classical topos, however, exceeds this schematic resistance. Prof. Seigneurie argues that the renewed standing-by-the-ruins trope is a flexible aesthetic node that can give voice to a variety of otherwise occulted subject positions.

Ken Seigneurie is the director of the World Literature Program at Simon Fraser University, Surrey (British Columbia, Canada), since 2009. Currently, he is also an affiliated researcher at the OIB and Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Lebanese American University Beirut until September 2010. His disseration is entitled: “Space and the Colonial Encounter in Lawrence Durrell, Out el-Kouloub and Naguib Mahfouz.”

Information on participating / attending:

Date:

06/15/2010 19:00 - 06/15/2010 21:00

Event venue:

Orient-Institut Beirut
Rue Hussein Beyhoum 44 (neighbouring City International School);
Zokak el-Blat;
P.O.B. 11-2988 Beirut
Lebanon

Target group:

Scientists and scholars, Students

Email address:

Relevance:

international

Subject areas:

Cultural sciences, History / archaeology, Social studies

Types of events:

Entry:

05/31/2010

Sender/author:

Gesche Schifferdecker

Department:

Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit

Event is free:

yes

Language of the text:

English

URL of this event: http://idw-online.de/en/event31594


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