Saving Face

For the parliamentary elections of 2000 in Lebanon, the city walls had been covered with posters of smiling candidates. One after another: Rivals smiling jovially next to each other, and then, again, ten identical bills in a row. After a series of shots demonstrating to what extent the election posters dominate the scene, director Jalal Toufic films two people with scrapers who (on the face of it, randomly but perseveringly) scrape away at the bills, until all that is left are strips of paper and fragments of faces. A mouth, an eyebrow, a pair of glasses. Some posters exhibit an even stranger effect, when part of one candidate’s face peers from underneath the partly removed photo of another. The results is a hybrid of faces: an ear or nose appears in an unexpected place. In other cases, the parliamentary candidates, all posing alike, merge into a single universal politician.