BEIRUT, 10 November 2004 — Lebanese cinematographer Hassan Noemani was presented with the lifetime achievement award for work in Arab cinema at this year’s Docudays Film Festival.
Noemani began his career in 1965 as an amateur cinematographer at the Lebanese Television Company (LTC). After some years he turned professional, in LTC, shooting reports on 16-millimeter film before working on feature television series and collaborating with a variety of directors, including Elias Matta, George Ghayyad and Haitham Nasr.
The turning point in his career came when he met filmmaker Maroun Baghdadi in the early 1970s and began to work on feature documentaries.
According to director Hadi Zaccak who worked with him on his short film “One Thousand and O! Nights,” Noemani became at this point “no longer a mere technician with a shooting list, but rather ... an integral part of the film. Into it, he would pour his emotions and argue his opinions with a young and enthusiastic filmmaker, who harbored great cinematic ambitions.”
With Baghdadi, Noemani made several films during the war dealing with people and a land being tragically altered forever, capturing their hopes and fears. Their films from this time include “The Most Beautiful of Mothers,” “Nostalgia from the Land of War,” featuring the poet Nadia Tueni in 1979, “A Story of a Village and a War,” and “All for the Homeland,” and dealt with images of war and the first Israeli invasion, capturing in great color and detail the tragic situation unfolding in Lebanon.
His work with other young filmmakers interested in the image of reality included “Lebanon in Turmoil,” (1975) by Joclyne Saab, “Dangling Dreams” by Jean Chamoun and May Masri and “Our Straying Wars” (1995) by Randa Shahhal Sabbagh.
Noemani has recorded life and war in Lebanon throughout his career. Not wanting to work elsewhere he remains dedicated to documenting the situation in his home country though he did work with such foreign directors as Belgian Wilfred Bossier, who took Noemani with him to Syria and Egypt in search of archaeological and cultural revelations.
Noemani’s narrative feature film work includes “A Woman in a Giant House” (1983) by Zinardi Hbeis and “Battle” (1985) by Roger Assaf. (Courtesy: Photo and text The Daily Star)
