The Vertiginous Story of Orthosia

This story unfolds in the north of Lebanon, at Nahr el Bared, in a refugee camp hastily set up to shelter Palestinian families fleeing the Nakba of 1948. Years later, in 2007, war broke out between the Lebanese army and an infiltrated Islamist group, leading to the destruction of part of the camp. It was at that moment that the first traces appeared of Orthosia, an ancient Roman city, which vanished after being overwhelmed by a tsunami in 551 AD and which, despite 15 centuries of vain attempts to find it, no-one could ever have imagined it there. But how best to deal with this major discovery, as excavations would mean a ‘second displacement’ for the refugee families? The filmmakers and artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige use photography, installations, video and cinema to question the account of the imagination and writing about the story. Through this performance, they uncover the palimpsest of constant cycles of construction and destruction, calling on the possible narratives about the underground worlds. A dizzying performance, full of (dis)continuities, upheavals and regeneration, which plunges us into a past that feels particularly close to the present.

Archaeologist: Hadi Choueri
Research: Maissa Maatouk
Cinematography: Talal Khoury, Joe Saade, Khalil Joreige
Video editing: Tina Baz, Cybele Nader
Animation: Laurent Brett
3D animation: Maissa Maatouk
Sound editing and mixing: Cherif Allam, Rana Eid – Studio DB
Music: Charbel Haber, The Bunny Tylers
Studio manager: Tara El Khoury Mikhael

Commissioned and produced by Kunstenfestivaldesarts
Coproduction: Points communs – Nouvelle scène nationale de Cergy-Pontoise et du Val d’Oise