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| Around the Pink House |
I watched again one of my favorite Lebanese movies. For everyone that has not seen it yet pick up a copy or at-least read about it.
This blog entry will discuss the movie, “Around the Pink House” that highlights how post war policies on the macro level regarding reconstruction and the internally displaced affected people’s ability to recover from the war. The ambition of this entry is to highlight the importance of personal narratives and experiences within spatially just reconstruction plans and policies, which were disregarded, and shows how the top down macro scale decisions continue to disturb the post-war geography of the city.
Documenting the invisible struggles:
The movie begins with a day to day event interrupted by a traffic jam in a neighborhood with men in uniform running in-between the cars. The scene of daily life mixed with a scene of militias and day to day war scenes highlights a confused and forced transition from the war period to the post war period. The people stuck in the traffic are not disturbed by the militia men running through and are discussing an explosion that is shown on a television in a cafe. This starts the conversation about reconstruction and what this new type of city destruction will bring to the residents of the city. One man in a café proposes that the new plan for a new ‘world’ city is going to save the neighborhood with an upsurge in the economy.
The movie then focuses on the pink house by showing us a man looking into the day to day activities and windows of the houses residents. We see the the pink house in the activities of its residence.
The camera slows down several times during the movie; the music becomes eerie and shifts into the private moments of the characters. The moments only share a common house, the pink house, but their memories and thoughts are varied all affected by the trauma and displacement of the war.
These portraits create multiple narratives that show that the groups opinions about post war reconstruction were not based on peoples religions but on their a geo-political locations and outlook on social justice.
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| Around the Pink House - screen shots |
