Missives from the End of the World

“There is something in borders and frontiers that magnetically draws me to them, while of course the utopia of a world in which these absurd divisions don’t exist is always on my mind,” pondered Jocelyne Saab in one of her last films, (2015). This musing thought pretty succinctly sums up Saab’s artistic ethos, based as it was in a conscious understanding of division coupled with a humanism devoid of illusions. After completing her studies in economic sciences at the Sorbonne, Saab worked on a pop-music radio show before being hired by the Lebanese-American poet and artist Etel Adnan to work as a journalist and television newsreader. Unlike most war reporters, who must travel to war zones to pursue their profession, war came to Saab’s native Lebanon in 1975, and that same year saw the beginning of Saab’s filmmaking career with , a journalistic account of the various forces