The Lebanese Rocket Society: The Strange Tale of the Lebanese Space Race

Directed by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Lebanon/France/Qatar, 2012, Color/B&W, 93 minutes)
Language: Arabic

In the early 1960s in Lebanon, Manoug Manougian, a professor of mathematics at Haigazian University, and his students designed and launched rockets for the study and exploration of space. The program began mobilizing other researchers and soon the Lebanese Rocket Society was born. After the program fell under control of the Lebanese Army, state financing enabled their rocket designs to be continually improved and tested. Despite its success, the Lebanese Rocket Society stopped operating suddenly in 1967, and the ambitious scientific project vanished from collective memory. Structured in two parts, the film relays the Lebanese Rocket Society’s astonishing story in its first chapter, and in its second, follows the filmmakers as they try to reconstruct one of the rockets as a sculpture—one ominously resembling a missile, in a region teetering on the brink of conflict.

Screening at Row House Cinema.