Nadim Tabet

September has just come to an end and, unfortunately, I did not manage to achieve one of the goals I had set myself for the month, namely to finish a text I am currently writing on Lebanese cinema. A text shot through, among other things, with the question of what this cinema should film at a time when the country is living through a new Israeli invasion, when Lebanese society is more divided than ever, and when narratives from elsewhere about what is happening to us are already beginning to emerge. I am thinking, for example, of the film that has been announced about the pager operation, which will probably remain silent about the destruction caused by Israel in southern Lebanon and instead invite the viewer to marvel at the technical feat involved in such an operation.

In the second chapter of this series of texts on the grand sweep of History and the story of my son, Raphael, The Time of Repetition, the Time of Acceleration , I explored the return of the discourse of civilizational supremacy inherited from the sixteenth century, and its embrace by the advocates of a new civilization in which technologies such as artificial intelligence are destined to matter more than human beings. Yet in its cautiously optimistic conclusion, the text returned to Lav Diaz’s film Magellan and to the director’s decision to portray the figure of the Filipinos’ victorious resistance against the conquistadors, Lapu-Lapu, as though he were a specter rather than a historical figure who had truly existed.

In the first chapter of this series of texts on the grand sweep of History and that of my son, Raphaël — "The Time of the South, the Time of the North" — the subject was the difference between the countries of the South, where History is still on the march, and those of the North which, according to Fukuyama, are living through "the end of History." But in its conclusion, the text returned to an intuition of the poet Etel Adnan, according to whom Lebanon — where the past resurfaces permanently in the present — is becoming "the prototype" of the world of tomorrow. Of course, this relationship to time may seem counter-intuitive to defenders of the historiographical tradition according to which History has a direction. A tradition that finds its origin in the biblical history of David, as related in the Books of Samuel, and which has since been taken up by the many philosophies of History that proliferated in the nineteenth century.

1 – Facing erasure In a prologue to this series of texts — “From Eternal Darkness to Histoire… de Raphaël” — I explained why, in these dark times for Lebanon, I decided to turn toward History with a capital “H,” as well as toward small-h history: namely, the story of my son, Raphaël. To summarize, it is first of all to salvage from oblivion what can still be saved, at a moment when Lebanon as we know it is threatened with disappearance. Then, because at the global level, we are living in a time that gives full meaning to a quotation from George Orwell, taken from 1984 : “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Cinema, Architecture, and Power Seen some time ago, it is the season of year-end film rankings that brings The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s film, back to my mind. The film appears in several rankings, since although it is a 2024 production, its international release took place in 2025. And, by sheer coincidence perhaps, this film resurfaces at a timely moment in my life, as it coincides with a period in which the notion of power manifests itself in all its forms: in its moral perversions, through the Epstein affair; in its arrogance, through the capture of Maduro; in its violence, through the repression of protesters in Iran; and in its new incarnations. I am thinking in particular of the importance now granted to the control of digital space, symbolized recently by Israel’s intention to invest in ChatGPT in order to influence its responses in a direction favorable to its interests.