- Title: LEBANON-FILMMAKER/DAGHER Lebanese filmmaker shows award winning film on home turf
- Date: 22nd July 2015
- Summary: BEIRUT, LEBANON (JULY 20, 2015) (REUTERS) PEOPLE GATHERING AT EMPIRE METROPOLIS SOFIL CINEMA THEATRE AHEAD OF THE SCREENING OF ''WAVES '98'' SIGN READING IN ENGLISH 'EMPIRE METROPOLIS SOFIL' PEOPLE GATHERING IN THE CINEMA THEATRE HALL AHEAD OF THE SCREENINGS VARIOUS OF FILM POSTER WITH SIGN OF CANNES FILM FESTIVAL'S PALME D'OR MORE OF PEOPLE GATHERING IN THE CINEMA HALL (S
- Embargoed: 6th August 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Lebanon
- Country: Lebanon
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA6U4UDRSSIAAT3UO6XR4GVQ8XT
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Film fans flocked to a Beirut cinema to attend the Lebanese premiere of award winning filmmaker Ely Dagher's film ''Waves '98''.
The film won a Palme d'Or at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in May, making Dagher the first Lebanese filmmaker to win a prize in the short film category.
Speaking before the screening, he said the film has a personal story, drawing on his relationship with Beirut.
"When I was writing the film, I was travelling a lot between Europe and Lebanon so my relationship with the city was changing, and I wanted to see where this relationship was and where I stood from this city. So I personally wrote the film like a therapy somehow to discover where my relationship with Beirut was,'' said the young director.
It took Dagher two and a half years to complete the film, which he wrote, directed, and produced alongside a team of 13 people who helped him realize his cinematic dream.
"The feeling was already great when I was selected in Cannes. I wanted my film to reach Cannes so I can have a big audience, the life of a short film is very short so it is important to launch it in a big festival like Cannes, and being selected was something great. Then when I won and I did not really realize it immediately. I think I still did not realize that I won the Palme d'Or,'' he said.
Around 1000 people attend Monday's (July 20) film screening, and Dagher was welcomed by the audience with rapturous applause, with many praising his achievement.
"This is something everyone should be proud of and it gives hope to all the Lebanese cinema and all the Lebanese producers and directors, the young talents and the more professional ones, to continue the adventure and build a stronger and bigger cinema industry in Lebanon,'' said Serge Akl, Director of the Lebanese Tourism Office in Paris.
The national premiere of ''Waves '98'' was organized by the Metropolis Association and the Lebanese Tourism Office in Paris under the high patronage of the Lebanese Minister of Tourism Michel Paraon marking the closing of the rerun of the Cannes Critics' Week in Beirut.
Dagher is the first Lebanese film director to be awarded a Palme d'Or award since 1991, when Lebanon's late filmmaker Maroun Baghdadi won the Jury Prize at Cannes for his movie 'Hors La Vie'.
''Waves '98'' focuses on a young man, Omar, who is disillusioned with his life in the suburbs of segregated Beirut and finds himself lured into into the depths of the city. Immersed into a world that is so close yet so isolated from his reality that he eventually finds himself struggling to keep his attachments, his sense of home, according to the film's synopsis.
For some of those attending the screening here, like Lebanese Actress, Nadia Hassan, she said the film left her questioning things.
"I loved the film visually but I was just thinking with my friends that there are some symbolic things which I am still trying to understand, like what is the significance of the elephant and why it is suspended above water in the end. So it makes you think, you can't immediately say you understood everything about it. But it is amazing that it won the Palme d'Or and it will obviously give a push to Lebanon and puts it on the map,'' she said.
Dagher is a graduate in animation and art direction from l'Academie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA). He graduated in 2009 with a Masters degree in new media and contemporary art studies from London's Goldsmiths College.
His short film has qualified for the Academy Awards, leaving many here hoping that he'll also win an Oscar for Lebanon. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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