Roads to the Ruins

In Roads to the Ruins Philip Widmann searches for traces of the first Lebanese talking film and its producer. Their fall into oblivion may have been brought about by conditions that similarly account for the contested value of ancient edifices and the changing fabric of the modern city. Colonial and postcolonial imaginaries as well as a nostalgia for a cosmopolitan community across ethnical, religious and linguistic boundaries converge on these roads to the ruins, whose layout seems to have been devised by the concurrent popularisation of cinema and motorised private transport during the 20th century.