"WHAT'S GOING ON?" is a tale of exploring the imagination of a writer, and the parallel discovery of the elements of the city of Beirut. The film deals with the initiation to embrace love, and runs along the delicate case of the female soul. Will JALAL, the writer, succeed in writing his book? What will he do with the heart which he steals?
And so the title of the film-"What's Going On?" takes on a new meaning.


SYNOPSIS

BEIRUT 2010. A writer, who regrets not keeping his promise to his dressmaker father to follow in his footsteps, designs, cuts, sews and pins the "body" of his own text.
His imagination is inspired by real people. KHOULOUD, a woman who dances in parking lots which are full of the city's memories, and whose loving heart he wishes to steal. Thus the metaphor of imagination introduced through scissors, patterns and fabric which the writer drapes over a dressmaker's mannequin.
From the very first shot, it is not clear what is going on.
The writer JALAL steals from the actual characters bits and pieces of their true stories in order to transform them into characters for his novel.
What is true? What is false? Who are the characters? Are the situations real? Or is the writer once again diverting the lives of his models for his own creative purposes; a new love story in Beirut?
He physically kidnaps the heart of his heroine KHOULOUD and adds it to the pages of his book. What is he going to do with it ?
When the absurd flirts with disillusionment.  It is
with that in mind that the sound was put together and
mixed.



NOTE OF INTENTION


At every instant where I feel that a connecting bridge to my city of Beirut is being dilapidated, I feel the need to come back and work on a film as one more of my childhood bridges disappears. But what body to give my city?
My city no longer has a body which I am familiar with, and yet my emotional connection remains in a preserved locale within me.
Meeting the poetess Joumana Haddad, who had written Lilith attributed to the Sumerian Civilization, the idea to work on a new film came to me. Visually, it relates to a heart that is stained and suffers; a heart in need of transplant. A change which manifests itself through my heroes, and links me with the city which is in a similar process of renewal.
The poem of Lilith was my muse in endowing me with the inspiration to work on a concept of my own.
Where should this heart settle to be able to sustain its revival and breathe?
This central question pondered me to think of a book and a writer; a thief who has the heart to physically kidnap another, and store it inside of his book. Using it, he gives life to new characters and becomes the tailor of existence. A book without written words, rather one with words lived within the city.
Irrespective of actual nature, I imagined images that employ fantasies that render the secrets of Beirut visible; the ones that retain and guard my own.
My writer speaks of city gardens; those of knowledge and flourish.
At first, I psychologically sketched my writer in a primitive but deeply emotional manner. His inner voice narrates:
"…Thus for the characters of my book, I sketch the silhouettes, carve, cut and pin them on mannequins to shape and reconstruct them by hand…"
The metaphor of the tailor serves to relate what occurs in the mind of a writer, who with humor casts and feels the characters he is molding and giving birth to.
The frame, being fixed, navigates between reality and fiction. And with a suffice of minimal dialogue, the music and sound of the characters is vital in providing a supplement to the story.
For the writer and his imagination, the scissors and pins with the mannequins are accompanied by piano.
For Khouloud the heroine, she dances along with metronomic sounds; those heart beats and rhythms of the Farican wilderness where she partially belongs. She also has her own African sound within her inner voice through Sabali by Amadou and Maryam. As for her Arab routes, Arabic Blues (Tarab) signifies her local affiliation and the problem of her cardiac transplantation.
Nasri, the young man whom Khouloud falls in love with, is in search of knowledge [savoir]. Just like the long-distance runner of Murakamin's Novel, we hear the breath and it's steps before it transcends into the sound of his voice.
It is Lilith; the half woman half goddess that brings out the texts of Sumer which renew the image of the woman to him, and initiate the feminine soul to his apprehension.

by Jocelyne Saab
with Nasri Sayegh, Khouloud Yassine, Joumana Haddad.

Lebanon > 2009 > 1h22 > Color