RAMALLAH, West Bank — Amid buildings teetering on the brink of collapse under a sky torn by snipers, Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri walks with her husband, the Lebanese director Jean Chamoun, to document the destruction of the 1982 Lebanon War. The couple’s walk, with both carrying cameras, is one of the memorable scenes in a 27-minute portrait of Chamoun. 

The documentary about about the cinematic and personal journey of Chamoun and Masri was screened for the first time at a commemorative festival in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Aug. 28, a year after Chamoun’s death on Aug. 10, 2017.

The festival, organized by FilmLab: Palestine, screened Chamoun's best-known films and included a series of seminars and debates that explored his career, his political views and his stances on the Palestinian cause right up until his death in Lebanon last year. The event featured a number of the joint productions between Masri and Chamoun, including “In the Shadows of the City” (2000), “War Generation Beirut” (1989), “Suspended Dreams” (1992) and “3000 Nights” (1995).

“Preserving Jean’s cultural and cinematic heritage means continuing to work according to the principles we established,” Masri, originally from the northern West Bank city of Nablus, told Al-Monitor.