Lens On Lebanon is an international grassroots documentary initiative formed during the Israeli bombardment of 2006. The documentary material, photo narratives, and video diaries of daily life gathered here have been conceived, produced, and contributed by residents of Lebanon from all walks of life.

Lens on Lebanon is a grassroots documentary initiative formed during the devastating Israeli bombardment of 2006. As filmmakers, journalists, and activists from Lebanon, Europe, and North America, we have pooled our resources to deliver film and video equipment into communities in south Lebanon and other areas transformed by the conflict, and to bring out documentary evidence as well as photo narratives, and video diaries of daily life.

Although a fragile ceasefire is now in place, and hundreds of thousands of refugees are returning to ravaged towns and villages, the south’s infrastructure has been effectively destroyed and the region remains largely inaccessible to international observers. With a nascent reconstruction effort led by Hizbollah and a continued Israeli military presence, it has become a volatile region in a period of historic transformation. The primary concern of Lens on Lebanon is to provide technical support to local communities in order that they might document lived experience of the conflict and its aftermath in their own terms.

Project goals

Since it was first conceived at the onset of hostilities in July, this initiative has been structured as a collaborative endeavor in which Lebanese in the south and the southern suburbs of Beirut, along with Palestinian refugees and other vulnerable communities, will team up with networks of activists, artists and filmmakers, both locally and abroad, to create a community media website for both political and historical documentary purposes. While the international media reported extensively on Israeli air strikes in the south and the southern suburbs of Beirut, the ongoing effects of these events on the economic, social and psychological life of towns, villages and camps, have been less well covered. We aim for a rich variety of perspectives – from a cab driver working the treacherous route between Sidon and Beirut, to a Palestinian family in Ayn-Hilweh camp sheltering Shia refugees waiting to return, to a fisherman from Tyre documenting the destruction of his livelihood.

Our goal has been to deliver digital camera and mini digital video recorders into the hands not of outside professionals but of local people living through this period, and thereby to bring a grid of sustained attention not only to the repercussions of dramatic events such as the Qana massacre but to the ongoing realities of daily survival. We hope that the material collected will help to fill out the picture both for the lay public and the professional media. Most important of all, it will also enable the victims of this conflict to document war crimes, providing an invaluable resource for future advocacy. The material collected will be circulated to media outlets and activist groups worldwide.

lensonlebanon.org

This website has been created as a community media hub to which digital video diaries, photographs and other visual materials can be uploaded as podcasts, worked into foto-roman style narratives, and so on. A virtual gallery for digital photos and short clips taken with cell phones is also being developed. This website will function as a supplement to journalism, a historical archive, and a public act of witness. The materials herein collected will be a resource for scholars, researchers, filmmakers, and activists working in the field as well as for the communities themselves.

Distribution of equipment

Donated equipment is currently being distributed by a network of experienced volunteers. We have assistants in Sidon, Beirut, and Tyre, and extensive contacts in the south and in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Lens on Lebanon is also working in close coordination with existing activist groups, including the International Solidarity Movement (now operating in Lebanon) and other relief organizations such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. In areas where participants do not have access to high-speed Internet, or resources to produce podcasts themselves, we will have point people who will be responsible for collecting and uploading the material on a regular basis. Two editing studios dedicated to Lens on Lebanon’s work have been set up in Beirut and Sidon and are now available to project coordinators and participants.