Life in solitary

It is, by turns, an Alpine paradise, a captivating, blue-green landscape of fruit trees and snow-dusted peaks unmolested by the scars of recent human activity, and an isolation ward of almost apocalyptic abandonment. This is the village of Ain al-Halazoun, nestling in one fold of a steep-sided valley near Aley and characteristic of the Western Lebanon range; roads hug the hillsides, road signs quietly rust in pools of grass and bare-barked olive trees perch over expansive views. And although it could be any settlement in Lebanon’s wrinkled central spine, this is one is uniquely desolate – and it boasts one solitary inhabitant.

Semaan el-Habre moved to Ain al-Hazaroun in 2001, seven years after the prohibitions on people living in the area was finally lifted and 18 years after the War of the Mountain, fought largely between Christian and Druze communities that devastated the entire region. So far, no one else has joined him. Every morning he wakes to an empty house, heated by a wood-burning stove in the centre of the spartan living room, and begins a day of chores around the farm, kept company only by the spluttering lamentations of his cows and his endless stream of folk songs. Each night, he raises a glass of tea to his lips, obscured by a moustache of Mexican outlaw proportions, warms his hands on the licks of fire that shoot from the blackened oven and lights a cigarette, enveloped by complete, all-encompassing silence. “I miss them,” he says, of his former neighbours, long dead and whose dilapidated, unloved houses serve as their headstones. “I miss their kindness.”

The slow rhythms, the individual hardships and the unrelenting detachment are all caught in The One Man Village, a spellbinding documentary filmed in over two years by Semaan’s nephew, Beiruti filmmaker Simon el-Habre. The 88-minute mediation on war, memory and the psychological paralysis that continues to dog Lebanese society had barely left the edit suite when the plaudits were raining down from festival juries around the world. The most prestigious, perhaps, was the first prize at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto, which earned 34-year-old Simon $10,000 for his “enchanting and gripping film” told with “exceptional clarity”. Critic and Berlin Festival curator Birgit Kohler described is “a superb document of war’s impact on a changing countryside”.

“It’s the film I wanted to make,” says Simon, still overwhelmed at the response to his directorial debut, and finding a spare hour between flights and phonecalls to discuss the astonishing impact of The One Man Village. “It’s not even really about my uncle, he’s the vehicle for the story about the role of memory in Lebanon, the collective amnesia of our society. We simply want to forget the past, bury it. So, the film is about migration, land, homes, division and exile – and all told through the memory of this particular village.”

The narrative is divided between Semaan’s recollections of the village, each dealing with the themes of loss and rediscovery – from his recollections of childhood holidays in the village, to the decision to come home. He recounts a story of his father’s death and the fate of his last remaining cow, which, when sold, he escorted all the way to the farm of the new owner, resolving to return and work his family’s land. Now, of course, he has a herd of cattle all his own, providing milk that he sells by the churn from the back of his blue pick-up. “I milk them in the morning and feed them at noon,” he says in the film, “And at night, I distribute my milk. When I want to rest, I do. The city bored me with all its crowdedness and pollution.”

“My uncle is someone who likes solitude, the space to think,” says Simon. “He talks a lot about not getting married or having children. He wants a big farm, he wants to repair the house and make it more comfortable, but he is also quite content as things are. He’s also a charismatic, funny deep and interesting guy, so he carries this story in a human way.”

The One Man Village is about memory, but it’s also about nostalgia, that fickle selective process of remembering that freezes moments in impossible idylls. As Semaan recalls and reflects, there is a feeling that while he wants his village to prosper, if it can’t return to the way it was, it may as well stay the way it is. Progress might overrule the past, but stasis will always preserve it. And the former inhabitants do come back to tend their land every so often, to offer a few hours of clearing scrub and pruning trees, moving rocks and straightening fences – and much as a widow would tidy a grave, it’s more out of respect as any genuine purpose.

“The people are attached to the land,” says Simon. “But they can’t live there. It’s like schizophrenia. Their memories are too strong, they can’t live the life they used to without the pain of what has subsequently happened. But this isn’t just Lebanon, or even just in the Middle East, this is a story that can be replicated around the world. A lady came up to me at a screening in Germany and told me about how her parents never wanted to return to their village after World War II – and that she never understood it until she saw the film. They simply didn’t want to be confronted with what they’d lost.

The One Man Village is a remarkable achievement in many senses. Not only is it Simon el-Habre’s maiden directorial outing, it’s the culmination of a journey on which he never really intended to embark. He chose a film course at the Accadémie Libanaise des Beaux Arts (ALBA) because he couldn’t face a lecture hall filled with 200 engineering students, and actually specialised in editing, eventually returning to Lebanon in late 2000 with a post-graduate degree from the esteemed la Femis film school in Paris. The closest inclinations as to his chosen career came at home watching Egyptian movies and wondering why no one else had noticed all the mistakes.
Most of his early work came, like so many Lebanese filmmakers, on television shows, news reports and commercials, which he juggled with teaching. Indeed, the director’s chair was nothing he actively craved. “I love editing,” he confesses. “I simply thought that as I worked and worked, found interesting projects, learned about new ideas and techniques, I would eventually find the story I wanted to make.”

Of course, a film about the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War, a two decade patchwork-quilt of a conflict in which every sectarian group, political faction or ethnicity seemed to be involved in some murderous dispute, is bound to stir emotions in a country whose wounds are far from healed. Although the film doesn’t seek to apportion blame, or even offer substantial detail on the abandonment of Ain al-Halazoun, nothing in Lebanon can remain strictly apolitical. This, ultimately, is a Christian village that was destroyed by Druze opponents; the point-of-view is hardly immaterial if you’re watching from across the valley.

“Well, firstly, I don’t think it’s in any way a controversial film,” he says. “I hope that the audience will be intelligent enough to appreciate that this isn’t a documentary of war, that I’m not making a point about reasons for the war. I do ask questions, and it does have a perspective – this is the story of my village, after all – but it’s not an attack and it’s not about blame. It is, I hope, the start of a discussion. And it’s a discussion we need."

The One Man Village has been screened just once in Lebanon so far, and the audience of 400 were almost universally supportive. At screenings around the world, moreover, at which thousands of expatriate Lebanese attended, the response was in tune with his goals. People said it reminded them of their villages, of their stories. The film will go on a more general release in Lebanon in September – by which time he will no doubt have a few more awards up his sleeve.

“I was very happy with the film when it was completed,” he says. “But I have to say that I had no idea the story would attract people in the way it has. I was determined to tell the story in the unique, indirect way, and I’m glad people have related to it. Ultimately, though, this is the film I wanted to make.”


Eyes on the prize
The One Man Village is already scooping the awards

Special Jury Prize – Muhr Arabic Documentaries
Dubai International Film Festival

Best International Feature Documentary
Hot Docs (Canada)

Feature Documentary/Special Jury Prize
Monaco Charity Film Festival

Special Grand Jury Mention
One World Human Rights Film Festival Prague (Czech Republic)


A full version of this article appears in NOX 36