I wrote this article exactly one year ago after interviewing Lebanese filmmaker Hady Zaccak and just rediscovered it online. 

Eric Reidy – SKeyes – 3 April 2013

“I am very attached to everything related to the socio-political environment,” says Hady Zaccak, a documentary filmmaker. “Beirut, of course, is always a center for this.”

Zaccak was born in Beirut, but his family left the city in 1976 because of the Civil War and went to the mountain. He visited the city during his childhood when there were calm periods and the roads were open. “My relation to Beirut was a more distant relation, seeing the city from afar,” at that time, he says.

“I started really discovering the city in 1992,” Zaccak continues, and tracing its emergence from the war. The first phase of this emergence involved people discovering what remained of the city from before 1975 following the destruction of the war.

The next phase was a period of reconstruction, which lasted from about 1995 to 2005. During this phase there was a feeling of not knowing the city anymore and a sense of amnesia, Zaccak says. “You are erasing everything and polishing everything as if nothing has happened and you are building a new future…

Read the full article here.