Beirut: War Generation is a documentary that depicts different lives of individuals living in Lebanon during the Lebanese war. It was made in 1988 by Jean Chamoun and Mai Masri, a Lebanese- Palestinian couple. This documentary was able to capture many different perspectives as well as showcase the undeniable effect the war has had on the country and its people. It shows how painful it is for anyone to live in a warzone. The famous Lebanese singer Fairuz described her beloved country in her song “for Beirut”, “She tastes of fire and smoke/ Beirut’s ashes are witness to her glory/ Now my city has turned out her lights/ With the blood of children on her hands”. One scene from the documentary showed a large group of young boys outside playing. Normally, if you think of young boys playing, you do not think of them pretending to be in a warzone, but that is exactly what they did. They had made make-shift rifles and guns out of sticks and soda cans and they were running around pretending to be fighting. They had fake blood drawn on their skin and while some of the boys were pretending to be dead or injured, the others were picking up their bodies and putting into a wheelbarrow to be rolled away. That scene really made me think about how much of an impact these experiences can have on children. And how those experience shape the lives of the people living in Lebanon at the time as well as future generations. It reminded me of a book called Limbo Beirut. One of the characters, Hassan, was an adult who had experienced the Lebanese war as a child, and still held those traumatic memories with him. The documentary really wanted to bring to light the struggles that everyone faced because of the war. It delved into the life of one of the militia men at the time. He was 19 and had been training since he was 13. He had become so desensitized to his job he compared shooting his gun to “eating a sweet or kissing a girl” and said it was nothing special. This reminded me of another character named Rami in Limbo Beirut, he was also a militia man and he said that he could not remember why he was still fighting. How much war and fighting can one person or country really take without being completely changed afterwards? A very memorable scene in the documentary is when one side of young men called out to
the opposing side asking, “Are you throwing away that gun or not?”, he replied, “I’m ready” and later goes on to say to him “when the border reopens, we’ll embrace each other, god willing”. They stated in the documentary that the people that they were beginning to fight against were people whom they knew, they were neighbors, but war had blurred these connections. The documentary also touched on the massacre that happened in Lebanon in 1982 in the Sabra and Shatilla camps for the Palestinian refugees. They talked directly to some of the victims of this horrible event. One man, a Palestinian who was born in these camps, talked about how the revolution that was occurring in Palestine effected his life in Lebanon. How at first, they were treated very badly, but when the revolution began the Lebanese people sympathized with the victims in Palestine and started to show more support for the Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon as well as the ones fighting in Palestine. This showed how powerful it is when Arab nations or countries come together in solidarity for a cause worth fighting for. It shows how just a small spark of hope can ignite a people wanting change.