95 mins | Lebanon | Arabic/ Eng. ST | 2012

Written & directed by: Raed & Rania Rafei

Produced by: Sabine Sidawi & Jinane Dagher (Orjouane Productions)

Research: Raed Rafei

Director of photography: Nadim Saoma

Camera: Nidal El-Cheikh Hussein & Nadim Saoma

Assistant director: Rana Salem

Sound: Fadi Tabbal & Stephane Rives

Art director: Nanou Ghanem

Costume design: Beatrice Harb

Editing: Rania Rafei

Colorist: Khalil Abourrousse

Still Photos: Rachel Tabet

Cast: Nassim Arabi (Yussef); Nizar Sleiman (Fawaz);

Rita Hodroj (Rima); Assad Thebian (Ghassan)

Sandra Njeim (Alia); Yusri El-Chami (Iyad)

& Maarouf Mawloud (Hanzala)

Voice-Over: Fadi Abi Samra

Funding by: The Arab Fund for Arts & Culture, The Screen Institute & Fonds Image de la Francophonie

1974: Lebanon is in intellectual, cultural and political ferment. BetweenMarch and April, for 37 days, the students of the American University of Beirut occupy the university’s premises to protest against rising tuition fees.
2011: In the midst of the Arab Spring, Rania and Raed Rafei decide to step back and reconsider today’s situation in light of that period which was pregnant with hope, but also a prelude to a civil war. Should they revive the past? Recall it? Reconstruct it? That’s a crucial question. Here the method is decisive. First, make meticulous research. Then launch the experiment, as the film doesn’t only reread past events but also searches for their echo in today’s time. Thus yesterday’s protagonists are portrayed by their likely modern counterparts, political actors involved in present struggles. What is democracy today, and how can we fight? A few guidelines, a few emblematic accessories as so many signs (a picture of Che Guevara, a megaphone), and here they go, launching into an experiment based on improvisation, in which a form of theatricality accentuated by the enclosed setting interacts with cinema. And in this dialectic of past and present, memories go around as freely as words in the present time, just like in the interviews which punctuate the film – yesterday’s and today’s words getting inextricably mixed. (Text by Nicholas Féodoroff)

Naeff, Judith. “Revolutionary Reenactment: Militant Futures past in Rania and Raed Rafei’s 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle).” Regards – Revue Des Arts Du Spectacle, nᵒ 27 (March), 2012, 19-36. https://journals.usj.edu.lb/regards/article/view/684.

Carson, Juli. “Beirut Lab: 1975(2020). Or: again, rubbed smooth, a moment in time__caesura.” In Where is Art? Space, Time, and Location in Contemporary Art. Douglas, Simone, Adam Geczy and Sean Lowry, eds. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022. [p. 133, 142, 143, 144 & 145 mention 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle)] 

Laura U. Marks. Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2015). [p. 131-133 dedicated to 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle)]

Morgan, Marwa. “Film '74': When Lebanon's past and present are different yet the same,” Ahramonline. April 19, 2015. https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/5/32/128062/Arts--Culture/Film/Film--When-Lebanons-past-and-present-are-different.aspx (Accessed September 1, 2022).

Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Katrine. “Reconstitution: on the contingent screen of Rania and Raed Rafei.” In Time in the Making: Rehearsing Reparative Critical Practices, PhD thesis, University of Copenhagen, 2015. [Excerpt of the chapter dedicated to 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle) can be found here]

“Une pensée du devenir – 74 (La reconstitution d’une lutte)[An idea of becoming – 74 (The reconstitution of a struggle)],” 24 images (n°161), March 2013, Quebec, Canada [written by Rania Rafei, Raed Rafei & Aude Malkoun-Henrion]. Read the article in French here.

Best Lebanese Documentary (Fondation Liban Cinéma, Lebanon, 2014)

Best International Film (Curitiba Intl. Film Festival, Brazil, 2013)

Best First Documentary & Audience Award (Tetouan Intl. Film Festival, Morocco 2013)

The GNCR Prize (FID Marseille, France, 2012)

2012

23rd FID International Film Festival, Marseille (France)

11th RIDM Montreal International Documentary Film Festival, Montreal (Canada)

DocLisboa International Film Festival, Lisbon (Portugal)

2013

“A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History” at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (France)

Visions du Réel International Film Festival, Nyon (Switzerland)

Olhar de Cinema - Curitiba International Film Festival, Curitiba (Brazil)

Tetouan International Mediterranean Film Festival, Tetouan (Morocco)

Touch Image Dream, with Images Festival & World University, Aalborg & Copenhagen (Denmark)

Middle East & Middle Eastern American Center (CUNY), New York

Delhi International Film Festival, New Delhi (India)

Filmfest Hamburg, Hamburg (Germany)

Lebanese Film Festival, Sydney (Australia)

“Sights of memory – Films from Lebanon” at the Arsenal cinema, Berlin (Germany)

DMZDocs, South Korea; Beirut Cinema Days, Beirut (Lebanon)

Middle East Now, Florence (Italy)

2015

Rewriting Histories Exhibition at the Photographic Center, Copenhagen (Denmark)                     

Hybrid Reels at Zawya, Cairo (Egypt)

2016     

Past is not Post Exhibition at Edith-Russ-Haus, Oldenburg, Germany

2017

la Route du doc au Liban- Les "États généraux du film documentaire" de Lussas, Ardèche (France)

2018                                   

Mark for Redaction at the Flux Factory, New York

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute, Cairo (Egypt)

2019

Bi’bak, Berlin

Beirut Lab: 1975(2020) curated by Juli Carson and Yassmeen Tukan at the University Art Galleries-University of California, Irvine

Festival LES FILMEURS, France

2020

Online screening in the framework of Between Women Filmmakers Caravan

Special Program of Olhar de Cinema- Curitiba IFF, Brazil

2021

2nd Arab Women’s Film Festival, Brazil

Void Gallery, Derry-Londonderry (Northern Ireland)

2022

UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art, New York

15th anniversary of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture- online program on AFLAMUNA platform curated by Mohamed Soueid (online)