The cover of the song "Fakir". (Rights reserved)
Nasri Sayegh is a curious, "obsessive artist," according to him. In his den on Rue Monnot, images scrolled across a screen. Sayegh closely analyzed the angles and details: The Raouche rock, the Murr tower, as if superimposed on his retinas for years, but also the terrible documents of the ongoing massacres in Gaza.
A lighter, two-person project, however, softens the universe of this polymorphous, multidisciplinary creator, never short of tools or inspiration. He moves from embroidery to poetry, from photography to video, from image processing to text and sound, like crossing or breaking down borders.
In tandem with musician Rayess Bek — a veritable contemporary shaman who remixes ancient melodies and break-beat beats — he creates rhythmic video montages set to Middle Eastern music under the title "Love and Revenge," borrowed from an old Egyptian film hit, "Gharam wan'tiqam."
'Love and Revenge': Rayess Bek's music and Radiokarantina's visuals
"A musical and visual event, the 'Love and Revenge' repertoire pays tribute to Arab culture and its popular idols of a bygone era," explained Bek. His quartet revisits the Arab cinematic heritage and its hit songs, such as those by Iraqi Kadhem Saher, Egyptian Nagat al-Saghira and the great composer Abdel Wahab.
Sayegh illustrates the "Gharam wan'tiqam" project under the @radiokarantina label, an artistic blog created during the confinement. It includes clips and podcasts, distributed on social networking platforms, with a frontispiece that reads, "In the darkest hours. Music. Rage. And love."
Under "Gharam wan'tiqam," film excerpts are remixed in perfect synchronicity with a wide variety of music: Hollywood-inspired musicals, genre and B-movies, remakes of the great myths of cinema (Dracula, Star Wars, Faust, Superman, cowboys and Indians from Westerns), not forgetting the cult scenes that made Arab cinema famous in the last century, explained Bek. @radiokarantina signs the synchronization of the images, their resurrection in the third millennium where rhythms, eras and cultures merge.
Wael Kodeih aka Rayess Bek (Love and Revenge) and Nasri Sayegh (Radiokarantina). (Rights reserved)
Umam saves the reels on the demolition site
This is how Sayegh feeds his wonder machine, drawing rare images and sounds mainly from the Umam Foundation and its precious "hangar," a research and documentation center co-created by murdered intellectual Lokman Slim and his wife, journalist Monika Borgmann.
Umam houses, among other things, the archives of Studio Baalbeck. Founded in 1963 and active for 20 years, Studio Baalbeck was the most important film production house in the Arab world, whose priceless archives have been saved thanks to the IRAB Association and the Umam foundation. The former managed to save many priceless songs, while the Umam Foundation recovered precious video films.
In 2010, on learning of the imminent demolition of the Studio Baalbeck site, Umam's team went to the site to try and save the reels and paper archives of this pillar of regional audiovisual history, which it will endeavor to preserve, catalogue and digitize.
Noha Hachem
"It all started with a rare song proposed by Wael [Bek's real name], in fact a popular ditty that must have been a summer hit," said Sayegh. This song, Fakir (meaning poor in Arabic), is sung by Noha Hachem, unknown to the battalion of local stars of the 1960s. "We're calling on anyone who knows Noha Hachem and can tell us more about her," he added.
Before Oct. 7, when Sayegh went to Umam to immerse himself in these visual archives and recover images likely to provide the material for the 4:04-minute clip he would make for the song. Inevitably, the outbreak of war in Gaza redefined priorities, and free art lost its relevance. In the end, the clip created from the viewing of one hour and 30 minutes of footage focusing on nightlife, beaches, clothes and above all the textures of the 60's will be presented for the first time at the foundation's exhibition opening focusing on Studio Baalbeck.
Image from the "Fakir" video by Radiokarantina and Rayess Bek. (Rights reserved)
Naiads on a sandy beach
Hachem sang, "Poor, who cares? He's poor, but we love him. He's handsome and we love him." The rhythm of the lyrics is as superficial and benevolent as this reputedly light period in Lebanon's history. In this innocuous song, we see Naiads running along a sandy beach, throwing themselves into the water while a figure in a swimsuit complacently rubs his belly, probably the painter Rafic Charaf.
We also catch a glimpse of young people body-painting and then, without transition, art students embarking in disguise on floats. The footage include a Sabah moment (which Sayegh considers his "antidepressant"), a fashion show with Georgina Rizk, a show featuring women dressed as men, the illuminated signs of the famous venue Crazy Horse and cabarets such as L'Étoile or Le Pavillon and an improvised make-up and belly-dancing session. The images are fragmentary and ageless, arranged in a pell-mell sequence.
Sayegh pointed out that each spectator recognizes someone, famous or simply familiar. "Those who wear make-up don't go to the same party, but it all ends in dance. It's also a chance to see the Holiday Inn and Baalbeck reproduced in cakes, proof that these places once had a life."
"What moves me is that people who watch the clip always recognize someone in it. Sabah of course, but also May Arida, Georgina Rizk, Egyptian actors and scriptwriters, painter Rafic Charaf on the beach. This game of who's who. I've put these images and sounds together to celebrate the little or the much that's left to us," explained the artist.
This project is a sumptuous way of making archives accessible and contemporary, and of revealing them to the general public as tangible proof of this "other Lebanon," an enormous fantasy of the generation now trying to reinvent a country.
This article was originally published in L'Orient-Le Jour, translated by and edited by Yara Malka.
