Two lovers hug each other. One, the head covered with a Lebanese flag, the other, a blue and green fabric. A poetic image projected, among others, in the heart of Beirut, at the unprecedented celebration of Independence Day, November 22.
The video mapping has captivated. All a symbol: because the screen was none other than the dome of an old cinema, a place of memory plunged into limbo since the end of the war (1975-1990). The time of the projection, the dark mass of concrete has recovered colors.
One of the spaces of the revolt
Marked by the impact of arms, the one nicknamed "the egg" or "the dome", because of its shape, is needed today, in Beirut, as one of the spaces of the revolt popular since October 17. Debates and evenings have already been organized. The planks surrounding the site were destroyed and gave way to a photographic exhibition dedicated to the uprising.
"For me, this place symbolizes the state of decay in which the political class has thrown the country. Ali, thirty years old.
The old cinema, which slips into darkness at night, had hosted exhibitions or underground parties in the past. But for the greatest number, it is today that it lends itself to exploration and the recreation of links with a downtown area, many of which feel dispossessed since its reconstruction, entrusted to a private land company, Solidere.
Ali lives a few hundred meters from the old City Palace in the popular Khandaq Al-Ghamiq neighborhood, but he had never been there before. "I just knew from my parents that before the conflict it was a cinema. For me, this place symbolizes the state of decay in which the political class has thrown the country, entrusts this thirty-something.
Icon of the Lebanese "golden age" before becoming a silent witness to the atrocities committed in the center of Beirut during the civil war, "the egg" has always fascinated. It was part of a modern mall project started in 1965, but never completed because of the conflict. It was nearly demolished and then rehabilitated; he changed his owner.
On several occasions, activists have mobilized to preserve it. "This is one of the last symbols of the war that has not been erased in Beirut," says architect Mona El Hallak, who saved a building on the former demarcation line, once occupied by snipers, and now a museum.
