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Thursday, November 12th 2015 AT 16:00 h, Großes BALi
state-theatre #5 BEIRUT

state-theatre #5 BEIRUT

"50 percent of what I'm going to tell you is a lie". With this warning disclaimer, a one hour speculative walking tour begins through the libanese capitol, Beirut, presented in a single shot. Six citizens of the city – two architects, a theater director, an urban planner, an artist and a real estate advisor – are the personal and idiosynchratic tour guides through the downtown area around Martyr's Square. The square, which used to be the public center of the city, and, during the Libanese War between 1975 and 1990, was the line of demarcation between the opposing factions, is a barren, empty lot today. It is the focal point of the film. It is an empty center, which the stories of the six tour guides transformes into a potential stage – for both theater and national identity. The film is a walk through a zone of contradictions, in which abandoned theaters and cinemas are just as present as military checkpoints, empty lots, designer boutiques, bars, improvised memorials for martyrs, bullethole-ridden statues and places of religious worship. In the fifth of their six-part "state-theatre" project, which explores the urban conditions for performance, and which other iterations were shot in Detroit, Lagos, Therean, Mönchengladbach and Berlin, Constanze Fischbeck and Daniel Kötter again visit a city in transformation. Where warring factions divided the area until 25 years ago, today, a complex system of economic borders has emerged in a city which has become the playground for real estate speculation. Over and over, the meandering camera faces borders: walls, blockades, concrete pillars, and construction fences made of wood and corrugated metal. At times, it bounces off of these barriers, at other times it simply floats accross them, just like the Beirutis narrating the film. In Beirut, there is no state theatre as such. And so, through the narration of the six locals and the performance of the camere itself, the empty, barren Martyr's Square more and more emerges as the actual Lebanese national theater.

  • Deutschland, Libanon
  • 01:03:00
  • Director: Daniel Kötter, Constanze Fischbeck
  • Languages: en,ar,fr
  • Subtitles: en
  • Year: 2014
  • Website
  • German Premiere