The Razor's Edge (Saab, 1985): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm
A unique example of activist experimental cinema on the survival of people during a time of occupation, thanks to the power of art, this film is preceded by a pre-recorded intro by Mathilde Rouxel, co-founder of the Association Jocelyne Saab.
New York Film Festival review:
“I’ve invented places, as if by making a
work of fiction about them, I could preserve them,” the Lebanese war
correspondent–turned–filmmaker Jocelyne Saab said of her interest in
fiction. Her 1985 drama The Razor’s Edge
takes place during the Lebanese Civil War and centers on the bond
formed between Karim (Jacques Weber), a fortysomething painter, and
Samar (Hala Bassam), a teenager who grew up during the war (Juliet Berto
has a small but striking role as Karim’s friend). Underneath the
character-driven narrative is another story, that of a place. Saab
started her career as a journalist working for French television and her
reporter’s eye deftly captures the destruction of war-torn Beirut and
the disparate but vibrant people wandering through its rubble and ruins.
Screenwriter Gérard Brach (The Tenant, Identification of a Woman)
worked on the final version of the script, and the result, juxtaposing
the creation of art with violence, is an arresting meditation on
humanity’s struggle in the face of unthinkable horror.
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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