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The sharp shooter

IN THE MIDST of war and devastation, filmmaker Philippe Aractingi decided the only way he could fight back was to shoot back - with his camera that is. As Lebanon laid in ruin following more than a month long bombardment in the summer of 2006, Aractingi began filming his critically acclaimed film ‘Under The Bombs’ - an amalgamation between fiction and real-life footage. We speak to the award-winning director about how it felt like making a war-film that needed no added visual effects.

You won the Gold Muhr award in 2007 for your film ‘Taht el Qaf.’ How did it feel toreceivethis recognition?

I was very honoured as the film is dedicated to the victims of Lebanon’s war. I felt that this prize was for them.

Can you tell us about the film, what inspired you to create it in the midst of war?

Caught between the urgent desire to bear witness and the need to be objective, this film will have taken less than a year to exist. It is the visceral expression of my anger at seeing my country, Lebanon, yet again devastated by war.

Many have tried to capture Lebanon’s turbulent history. What did you want to portray differently?

I wanted to let the viewers feel what it’s like to be under the bombs. I knew that other documentary filmmakers were explaining the situation in their film but for me, explaining was not as important as sharing the suffering of the victims.

Can you tell us what it was like filming in 2006 while the war was still raging on?

Torn between the need to act quickly before the dust of the bombing had settled and the necessity to remain objective so as to avoid making a mere partisan pamphlet, I decided to shoot in several stages. The war ended on August 13^th 2006. Three days after the ceasefire while Lebanon was burying its dead and the UNIFIL forces were landing on the shores of a land still under the shock of 33 days of bombing, I began making my film. In this war - that I neither decided nor understood - my actors and I filmed with the flow of events and not against them, while establishing a simple pattern of operation. Day by day, my actors improvised with the real protagonists of the drama, the journalists, refugees and civilians locked in by the deluge of bombs. The reality was infinitely more dramatic than any tragedy I could have invented, so I decided to simply capture it as it was. Two months later after taking the time to think about it all, Michel Leviant and I wrote a script that incorporated these scenes, shot during this intense period.In December 2006, I returned to Lebanon to film the fictional story. We needed to act quickly, because it is vital to react to current crises immediately.

kadry@khaleejtimes.com