The Association Jocelyne Saab
Founded in 2019, the Jocelyne Saab Association was born of a desire to return the filmmaker’s cinematic heritage to the Lebanese public. For many reasons – foremost among them Jocelyne Saab’s limited access to her own films during her lifetime – her work remained largely unknown in Lebanon. To counter this collective amnesia and to ensure that the painstaking work of restoring these images – images that are vital pieces of Lebanese memory – could take place locally, the association began by organizing a series of workshops for Lebanese technicians in partnership with European institutions and in collaboration with Lebanese post‑production companies. This initial group, roughly a dozen people fluent in Arabic, English, and French, restored twenty‑one of Jocelyne Saab’s films. Their expertise has since been put to work for other non‑profit initiatives dedicated to the valorization of filmographies from Arab countries (Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon). Beginning in 2024 they also ran workshops in Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Sharjah so that other rare films could once again circulate.
In 2025 the association helped to establish Maraya, a non‑profit civil‑society organization registered in Lebanon. All of the equipment acquired by the association over the years was entrusted to this new structure, which now works alongside the technicians trained by the association. Maraya’s mission is to host film‑preservation projects, restore films, conduct research into their histories and facilitate their circulation, while also offering its services and expertise to archives and partner initiatives.
Our Activities
The association’s activities revolve around the restoration of film archives originating from or dealing with the Arab world; training in film preservation and restoration; the transmission of knowledge and know‑how related to analogue practices (editing on 16 or 35 mm flatbeds; projecting 16 or 35 mm films); and support for contemporary creation inspired by archival material. The Jocelyne Saab Association holds the rights to most of Jocelyne Saab’s films as well as her visual and written work.
Most of the films shot between 1974 and 1986 on 16 mm are preserved in good conditions in the French Film Archives. Their restoration has made possible a wider dissemination. These restorations were made from Jocelyne Saab’s work prints – positive reversal copies that were heavily worn because the editing had been done directly on the film without negatives or internegatives being made. The images were badly scratched and stained even at the time of the original, hurried editing during the war; later they were further damaged when Jocelyne reused the material for other projects.
Restoration Efforts
From the outset the Jocelyne Saab Association was driven by the desire to make these images – most of them almost invisible until now – available to the public. It therefore undertook a major restoration project and chose to carry it out in Lebanon, where the majority of the footage had been shot during the civil war. This decision quickly became self‑evident. Not only did it resonate with the work of remembrance initiated by Jocelyne Saab herself, it also coincided with Lebanon’s slide into a profound economic, social and political crisis.
Training Workshops
To make the restoration project viable in Lebanon, a first stage consisted in raising awareness among a group of selected technicians about the stakes of film preservation. Thanks to the support of many internationally recognized professionals – the Institut national de l’audiovisuel, the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) and the Cinémathèque suisse – and the expertise of several Lebanese post‑production companies, the association organized a series of workshops in Beirut to pass on the techniques of film restoration (digitization, digital image restoration, digital sound restoration) in accordance with FIAF’s ethical charter. These workshops were aimed mainly at Lebanese technicians and technicians from the host institutions in Ghent (KASK & Conservatorium) and Marseille (Polygone étoilé). The result was the training of about ten Lebanese technicians whose work restored the first fifteen documentaries of Jocelyne Saab. In turn, they now guide other people eager to learn about the issues surrounding film preservation during workshops regularly organized by the association in various Arab countries (Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan). Each workshop is also an opportunity to restore films and put them back into circulation.
The association has worked with many organizations committed to the valorization of the Arab world’s cinematic heritage: Nadi Lekol Nas (Lebanon), Cinémathèque Beirut (Metropolis, Lebanon), Katsakh (Lebanon/Canada), Salame Archives (Lebanon), Cimatheque (Egypt), Wekalet Behna (Egypt), the Algerian Cultural Center (France), the Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE) and Tunisia’s National Archives. It also seeks to enhance Arab film heritage held in national archives or private collections in Europe. An agreement with La Fémis allows the digitization of student films by Arab filmmakers who studied at the IDHEC, and the association collaborates with associative structures such as the Digital Archives of Algerian Cinema (Saint‑Étienne), Talitha (Rennes), Braquage (Paris) and Dodeskaden (Marseille), all of which work specifically on heritage produced in North Africa or by its diaspora, or participate in the rediscovery of images from Arab countries that once circulated in the French film‑club network.