Screening memory: violence and trauma in De Gaulle Eid´s Chou Sar?
Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, 2015
Serie: ZMO Working Papers
13
11 p.
Chou Sar? (What happened?) is a documentary film
by De Gaulle Eid, made in 2010 in Lebanon. The
film consists of a number of interviews Eid undertook
with his close and extended family about a
massacre that took place one evening in December,
1980. Among the dead were Eid’s parents. Thirty
years later, as he visits his relatives and records
their stories, the question what happened? comes
to be directed more towards the personal, social,
and political circumstances in which the survivors
have coped. In the following discussion I focus on
how Eid’s film addresses this event by concentrating
on its aftermath. I am interested in how Chou
Sar? e ngages t he c apacity o f p ublic a nd p olitical
cultures in Lebanon to approach memory of violence
and enduring trauma as pressing concerns in
and for the present. In doing so, I suggest that the
film works to screen and situate violence and trauma
as both actual and potential modes of address
and response.