The Beirut Media Forum, which is organized for the fifth time by the Institut Français du Proche Orient (IFPO), the Foundation Friedrich Ebert (FES) and the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB), takes place at the École Supérieure des Affaires, Rue Clemenceau in Beirut, on Friday, November 20, 2009. 

Starting at 9 a.m., the ten lectures deal with documentary film in the Middle East in three panels under the subtitles of religious, political and social mobilisation. In the evening, we have also organized a screening of film clips and a round table talk with participants from the region.

The whole program can be found here in English and here in French.

This edition of the Beirut Media Forum is intended to question the conceptual diversity and the polysemy of the usages of “documentary” images. We especially relay ourselves to the analysis of the procedures and the dispositifs of manufacturing images as well as the roles and functions that they receive in the contexts of sanity, influence and mobilisation in the Middle East, or, beyond, in the look that is supported by it.  By using different disciplinary approaches, our conference aims to show the construction and impact of “documentary” images for collective mobilisations in their variety, but also in their reflection, i.e. in the manner in which they bear witness of this dynamic. The visual anthropology will be applied to clarify the place and the role of the image in these mobilisations as well as in the critical analysis of this new media “realism”.

The Beirut Media Forum 2009 is the fifth one of its kind. The conferences of the project are so far:

• The Influence of the Virtual Dialogue in the Media on the European-Middle Eastern Relations (2005);
• Public Opinion and the Media between Europe and the Middle East (2006);
• Middle Eastern Conflicts in the Media – Censorship and Representation (2007);
• Islamism in the Media (2008).