Memory of Memories Forgotten | Duration 7 minutes

For twelve years, my mother, Hala, lived as a Palestinian in Beirut, growing up in the shadows of a bloody civil war.

In 1982, the Israeli invasion of Beirut forced her to flee. One week later, the Sabra and Shatila massacre happened in the very camps where she had spent her days volunteering with children whose childhoods had already been stolen.

She never spoke of this day. As an act of survival, she erased Lebanon from her memory.

Thirty-three years later, I return her to that past, through archival images of Beirut captured in film.