Take me back to Hamra Street. Not the strip of franchise restaurants, or the avenue of glass-and-steel boutiques, or the boulevard of frapuccino joints, or the thoroughfare of parceled rubble piles.
Beirut is a city of difference: 9 layers of history lie buried under 67 square kilometers on which tiny pockets of art-nouveau architecture squeeze into a modern urban landscape co-inhabited by 18 different religious sects in tacit peace.
Renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas spoke this evening in Beirut about issues affecting not only the contemporary architect, but just about anyone who’s ever lived in a building.
Small places present the filmmaker with a dilemma: Shooting a film is an act of revelation, of uncovering secrets, yet the essence of a small place is often its shyness, its ambiguity, the fact that it refuses to reveal itself.
I went out for the first time in Tokyo one cold November night. The air was filled with a spirit of festivity and the smell of sake, and the Yamanote train was especially crowded with businessmen well ahead of my friends and I in alcohol intake.
is a writer/director born in Beirut, raised in London, educated in Tokyo, and residing in Los Angeles. His work explores questions of identity in an ever-shifting global landscape, and he’s specifically interested in characters outside predefined social or political groups.
