Season 2, Episode 5 - Memory Box (Lebanon)

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If you want to enjoy a true Middle Eastern Christmas, one with diverse religions and languages, but also filled with historic, cultural, culinary and artistic delights, join the Fans as we head on a festive jaunt to amazing Lebanon. This is a unique holiday location, with incredible natural beauty, that offers a little something for everyone -- ancient Roman ruins and castles, limestone caves, beautiful beaches, and mountainous ski resorts. It is a well-kept secret and a hidden gift that you didn’t know you needed, but one you should unwrap nonetheless.

We explore a Memory Box filled with journals, notebooks, cassette tapes and photographs. It is the basis for a film that incorporates different media and textures, where still photographs turn into mini-animations to illustrate a story that folds together the past and present. It begins one snowy Christmas Eve in Canada but flashes back to the Lebanese Civil War of the 1980s and Beirut on the brink of being torn apart. The box serves as a portal to painful and buried memories and experiences. Although not exactly common Christmas fodder, this is a deeply personal tale of old friends who still “eat with the dead and the ghosts” of the past.

And yet, when they reunite at the conclusion, now middle-aged and greying, they still can dance to Blondie’s One Way or Another with the same reckless abandon they had as teenagers. This moving echo of a memory seamlessly melding into modern day Beirut signals a brighter future for all, just as the brilliant sun rises over a reborn city. It provides a hopeful note that resonates with literal warmth and brightness. We can’t think of a better message to embrace for Christmas.

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