Coming Soon -Interlineal Ties

Simon El Habre, explores the transmission of desire, memory, and creation across generations.

Video still from Interlineal Ties, Chadi, son of the renowned poet Younis Al-Ibn, reminisces about his father as he looks through old photographs

Lebanese filmmaker Simon El Habre explores the transmission of desire, memory, and creation across generations in this series of filmed interviews which will be released in 2027.

The series features Chadi, son of the renowned poet Younis Al-Ibn, who is tasked with organising his archive, as he reminisces his late father. Throughout the interview, the archive’s artefacts become myriad Proustian triggers, releasing memories, sharp and clear, as though stored alongside them, giving memory itself the substance of an artefact.

The photo albums, in particular, draw filial attention. Sorted neatly into brown pockets and organised by year, Chadi shuffles through them, singling out pictures from the 1970s – here, a young Younis in the company of fellow poets; there, father and son, carefree in Lebanon’s golden age, as the family archive gets entangled with the national archive.

Video still from Interlineal Ties

Suddenly, upon reading one of his father’s most celebrated poems, Chadi’s composure gives way. In that moment, a multiplicity of dimensions converge: the personal with the historical and the symbolic, the political with the affective.

Drawing an unbroken line between family, land and people, Chadi gives voice to an acute awareness of the nation’s woes – inseparable from the sufferings of those who inhabit it. Last but not least, rootedness is explored as both choice and paradox; a belonging that, in the aftermath of tragedy, is deepened, binding individual purpose to a shared sense of meaning.

The filmed interviews will be available in our Oral History Collection in 2027. We are pleased to be working with Saint-Joseph University of Beirut (USJ) on subtitling the videos in English.

About Simon El Habre

Born in Beirut in 1975, Simon El Habre obtained his Diploma in Audiovisual Directing from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) in 1998 and graduated from Femis (Paris) in Film and Video Editing in 2000.

He taught film and video editing and documentary film-making at ALBA for six years. And since 2011 he has been teaching Film editing and directing (fiction and documentary) at Lebanese University, in addition to supervising graduation films.

He is also a member of the cultural association for the development of Arab cinema, Beirut DC.

Simon El Habre has built a strong reputation in Lebanon and the Middle East as an editor and director. He has edited many award winning short and feature fictions and documentary films. In 2008, he wrote, produced and directed a full-length documentary, The One Man Village. The movie was highly acclaimed by festivals, press and audiences internationally. It was screened at more than 30 festivals, including Berlinale, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the Jeonju International Film Festival and Vision du Réel. The film also received many awads among them the Best International Feature award at HotDocs 2009 and the Special Jury Award at the Dubai International Film Festival 2008. In 2011, he directed his second full-length documentary, Gate #5. The movie also participated in many Arab and international film festival.