From the very beginning the Jocelyne Saab Association sought partners in Lebanon capable of acquiring a scanner and the necessary software to continue digital restoration work in the country and to broaden its services across the entire region.
Over the years the association collaborated with many partners – post‑production houses such as Lucid Post and The Post Office; universities such as Saint Joseph University and the Académie Libanaise des Beaux‑Arts; cinema associations such as Metropolis, Nadi Lekol Nas, UMAM and the Cooperative of the Film Trades. These organizations had to contend with the violence of the economic crisis that has weakened the country since 2019, the port explosion in 2020 and the war on its territory since 2023. This difficult situation halted numerous projects and led many professionals to leave the country; several initiatives had to redefine their objectives.
Faced with the need to further structure its activities, the Jocelyne Saab Association participated in 2025 in the creation of a non‑profit civil society organization. Maraya – which means “mirror” in Arabic – is based in Lebanon. The association has entrusted it with all of its equipment: six fully equipped digital restoration workstations, a permanent licence and an educational licence for Diamant HS‑ART acquired in 2021, licences for Da Vinci Resolve Studio, Pro Tools and iZotope RX 11 acquired in 2022, a 16 mm rewinder and various mechanical restoration tools, storage devices (hard drives) and also access to the DIAZ database, acquired in 2025 in partnership with the Dodeskaden association in Marseille, to document as fully as possible each film that passes through the association’s hands and to make the metadata for each element as widely accessible as possible. This equipment currently enables the team of technicians to organize training workshops and to offer digital restoration services, which are usually accompanied by indexing and a brief research project.
The acquisition of a scanner in Lebanon will complete the workflow that the association has been developing since 2021: it will allow Maraya to put its expertise at the service of film archives held by institutions and associations in Lebanon and beyond. Access to a scanner in Beirut would not only facilitate work among partners already connected by the network, it would also allow many more films to re‑emerge, be restored and return to circulation.
The volunteer partners who head the Maraya civil‑society organization in Beirut are Nadim Kamel, Karl Salamé and Jinane Mrad. They are supported by the entire team of the Jocelyne Saab Association.
