Lebanon: Destruction and Reconstruction

Join Independent filmmaker and journalist W. Brandon Jourdan and documentary photographer Andrew Stern for a public screening and discussion of footage taken during and after the 34-day war in Lebanon.

When: Wednesday, September 20th 6:45 PM

Where: New School University, 55 W 13th St, Room 101-A

Below is a write up of the event:

*Lebanon: Resistance, Destruction, and Reconstruction*

*In the aftermath of the 34-day Israeli war in Lebanon, people emerged to find their homes and lives destroyed. After years of attempting to rebuild, Lebanon is once again in rubble. Much of the suburbs south of Beirut, the Bekaa area, the northern coastline, and many of the villages in South Lebanon were leveled by Israeli bombardment. The damage caused by the destruction of factories, energy plants, bridges, and roads affects all of Lebanon. The cost of repair is in the billions. Although Israel claimed to be fighting a war against Hezbollah, most of the victims are civilians, many of them children. *

Independent journalist and award-winning independent filmmaker, W.
Brandon Jourdan, went to Lebanon to document the destruction left by the offensive, cover the resilience of the Lebanese people, and to find the root causes of the conflict. His collected video provides in-depth analysis from experienced international journalists, activists, and academics, mixed with testimony from ordinary people who lived through the experience of this brutal war.

The video travels to areas hit hard by bombing; from Beirut's suburbs to
South Lebanon. It has rare interviews with survivors of the Qana massacre to leading Lebanese political analysts Sameh Idriss to Rima Fahkry of Hezbollah's Political Council. It follows families from throughout Lebanon and shows their untold story. In a multimedia-presentation using testimony and video, Jourdan shows the effects of war and the triumph of human will. The video is will be used as part of an upcoming Deep Dish TV series produced by Jourdan and several other documentary makers who worked in Lebanon.

In Samidoun, Andrew Stern, an award-winning documentary photographer, interweaves still photography and audio to take us on a heart-wrenching journey through the devastating thirty-four day war in Lebanon and its aftermath post cease-fire. It is a uniquely intimate look at the human cost of this bloody conflict that took the lives of at least 1600 people, wounded thousands, and displaced over one million. Stern's work takes us to the scene of massive bombings, travels through the desolation of Lebanon's destroyed landscape, bears witness as people emerge from the rubble to bury their dead, and ultimately reveals the steadfast determination of the Lebanese people to survive and rebuild their country in the face of unimaginable violence and national anguish. Stern's work is a reminder of the importance and power of independent journalism, in the face of a mainstream media that increasingly presents a one sided and superficial perspective.

"Samidoun" translates from Arabic to "steadfastness, or those who stay".
This presentation will also provide information on the Lebanese grassroots relief group, Samidoun, who provided desperately needed services to thousands of internally displaced peoples during the war and is now working to help people return and rebuild. For more information or to get involved or contribute, visit
www.samidoun.org.

About the Presenters:

William Brandon Jourdan:

Brandon is an independent filmmaker, journalist, and writer. He spent
time in Lebanon working with local NGOs and doing independent journalism following the 34-day Israeli offensive against Hezbollah. He was a coordinating producer, director, and editor for Deep Dish's award-winning series "Shocking and Awful: A Grassroots Response to War and Occupation" and "Fallujah", both of which played in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. He is co-founder of the North Carolina Independent Media Center and worked with the NYC Indymedia Video Team on over 80 episodes of the a nationally broadcasted half-hour weekly television show entitled Blacked-Out Media. He has contributed to Democracy Now!, Now with Bill Moyers, PBS's Foreign Exchange, Free Speech Television, the INN World Report, and to Amnesty International video projects. He worked with Academy-Award winning director Barbara Trent on two Empowerment Project documentaries.

Brandon Jourdan has spoken at various universities about the role of independent media and has been a guest on NPR's Talk of the Nation, Air
America's Laura Flanders Show, and WBAI's Wake Up Call.

He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY and works with the Not An Alternative arts collective.

For more information, visit http://www.wbjourdan.com or
http://www.wbjourdan.blogspot.com .


Andrew Stern:

Andrew Stern is a photographer whose work focuses on social and
political issues around the world. His work documenting the 34-day war in Lebanon and it's aftermath, the economic collapse and popular uprising in
Argentina, the war in Iraq, native land struggles in Greenland, the westernization of tribal East Africans, street kids in Calcutta, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, coca farmers in Bolivia, and the global protest movements has appeared in The Guardian, Harper's, La Jornada, Aftonbladet, Internazionale, Clamor, Yes!, Adbusters, Z, Dazed and Confused, Die Welt, and The New Internationalist as well as in galleries throughout the United States and Europe.

He is also co-author of We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of
Global Anticapitalism (Verso, 2003).

For more information, visit http://www.andrewstern.net or
http://digitalrailroad.net/astern.