The Lebanese Rocket Society

15-Installation of the rocket in Sharjah, AUE

The Lebanese Rocket Society in front of Cedar III, 1962

Microfilm of the front cover of the daily Al Anwar on the day of the launching of Cedar III rocket in 1962

14-Installation of the rocket in Sharjah, AUE

08- The rocket arriving at the University Hagazian, in Kantari Beirut

05-On the Highway, transportation of the rocket from Dbayé to Beirut

STORY LINE

The Lebanese Rocket Society: The strange tale of the Lebanese Space adventure

In the early 60’s, during the cold war and the apex of Pan Arabism, a group of utopian students and researchers enters the race to space and create the Lebanese Rocket Society. Sometimes, dreams can overtake a tormented history…

PRODUCTION

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

Animation:	Ghassan Halwani
Financed by:	Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) Doha Film Institute
With the support of:	Fonds francophone de production audiovisuelle du Sud Urban Distribution International SANAD
With the participation of :	Pascale et Mikael Zammar

CAST & CREW

Cast	Manoug Manougian John Markarian General Youssef Wehbé Harry Koundakjian Joseph Sfeir Hampar Karageozian Paul Haidostian Assaad Jradi Zafer Azar Le Ministre Ziad Baroud Le Ministre Tarek Mitri Fouad Matta Jana Wehbé
Executive producers	Jana Wehbe and Christian Eid
Editor	Tina Baz
Cinematographer	Jeanne Lapoirie Rachelle Aoun
Sound Editor	Rana Eid
Sound Mixing	Olivier Goinard
Music	Nadim Mishlawi Additional music Scrambled Eggs Discipline
Time	92 minutes
Format	DCP 16/9
Sound	Dolby Digital
Year	2013

Premiere Toronto International film Festival

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

The adventure of the Lebanese Rocket Society began, in the early sixties, at Haigazian University, a young Armenian University in Beirut, where a group of students, led by a professor of mathematics, Manoug Manougian, set up the Lebanese Rocket Society to create and launch rockets for space study and exploration. They produced the first rocket of the region. The project had no military character and was aimed at promoting science and research.
The adventure, which appears nowadays rather unbelievable and surrealistic, was nevertheless a serious one. Between 1960 and 1967, at the time of the Space Race and revolutionary ideas more than ten solid fuel Cedar rockets were launched. The launchings gave rise to celebrations. To commemorate the 21st anniversary of Lebanon’s independence, a set of stamps representing the Cedar IV rocket was even issued. The Arab defeat of 1967 put an end to the initiative.
The documents, photos and mainly films relating to the space project have almost disappeared.
This unusual and heroic adventure, which had made the front pages of the press, is nowadays forgotten. It appears like an anecdote in the course of history, a story kept secret.
The project investigates the apparent absence of the Lebanese space program from our personal and collective memory, shedding light on our perceptions of the past and present and our imagination of the future, exploring the notion of a collective dream. The project enables us also to consider the mythologies and historic events of those years: pan-Arabism and its decline after the Arab defeat by Israel in 1967, a moment which confused our societies, our parents generation, and which transformed deeply the Arab world and, first and foremost, images of ourselves.
Documents and archives as well as reconstitutions and art installations attempt to question this story and the ideas of reenactment, reconstitution and restaged in the present time.