Beirut: the last home movie

Duration: 123 mi

Genre: home movie

Year Published: 1987

Creator: Circle Releasing Corporation

Format: 16mm

Color: Color

Sound: sound

Description: This study of a once-prominent Lebanese family takes place in 1981 in Beirut where six years of warfare have ravaged and divided the city. Gaby Bustros returns to her 200-year-old ancestral home in the Christian Ashrafia neighborhood to try to persuade her family to leave their palatial manor which has miraculously withstood sniper fire and bombings. Gaby, her sisters Mouna and Nayla, and brother Fady reminisce about their rarefied childhoods and their father, a reserved man with powerful financial and political connections. As servants quietly tend to the needs of the family and help preserve the vestiges of an era long past, complex familial relationships emerge, even though members are reluctant to discuss their economic situation and the cataclysmic events which rock the city outside their walled compound. Obsessive in their denial, they carry on as if nothing has changed, taking tea, hosting a costume party and celebrating the brother's marriage.