LFF 2009 - Day 4

Day 4 kicked off with a special students’ showing in Theater 1. The cinema was (needless to say) packed again. Students from ALBA, IESAV and USEK cheered and chanted for their comrades, respectively Jad Eid, Robert Cremona and Joe Saadeh.

The second showing screened a retrospective of short movies from the Oberhausen Festival in presence of the Festival’s director, Lars Gass. “We select films we do not understand,” was Gass’ introductory sentence to the showing. At the end of the session, the Lebanese audience came out of the theater with the impression that Gass’ sentence was right to the point. They too did not understand much, except maybe for the movie Counter which was more accessible. Lars Gass and Akram Zaatari then held a 30min Q&A session with the audience, of which many were university film students.

Mohamed Soueid’s documentary Ma hataftou il ghayriha brought a beautiful end to day 4.
Right after Soueid’s screening:
Festival Spectator: “ What an interesting documentary! It was really worthwhile!”
Festival: “Oh, so the rest of the festival was not…?”
FS: “I didn’t say that! Of course it was worthwhile, but this documentary was superiorly good.”