Lebanon has censored a French film depicting homosexuality and a local short film about the tradition of temporary marriage among some Shiite Muslims, film festival organizers said Thursday.
The Beirut International Film Festival said it had been informed by officials that L’inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake), a thriller by Alain Guiraudie about two men who fall in love after meeting at a cruising spot for gay men along the shore of a lake, would be censored.
The other censored film is I Offered You Pleasure, by 26-year-old Lebanese director Farah Shaer. It deals with the controversial subject of temporary marriage, or “pleasure marriage,” a tradition among some Shiites that opponents view as an excuse for sex outside of conventional wedlock, otherwise forbidden by Islam.
A security official said the censorship board, which is attached to the interior ministry, had concluded the two films did “not meet its criteria” and that the minister would make a final decision on them.
Despite unbridled access to media via the Internet and the widespread pirating of DVDs, censors in multi-sectarian Lebanon ban all artistic works they believe incite sectarian strife, undermine morals or state authority, or which further “Israeli propaganda.”
Lebanon also respects a region-wide boycott of the Israeli arts enforced by the Arab League. Earlier this year, Beirut censored Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri’s award-winning film The Attack because it was partly shot in Tel Aviv with Israeli actors.
Earlier, the LGBTweekly.com reported that Strangers by the Lake would be one of the highlights of the Hong Kong Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (HKGLFF) which runs almost two weeks and features full-length films, shorts, and documentaries from around the world that deal with all aspects of the LGBT community.
The Lebanese penal code ascribes a one-year prison sentence to any man or woman caught in the act of same-gender sexual relations. But despite the difficulty that the LGBT community faces, Lebanon is one of the few countries in the Middle East that has a gay rights organization (Helem) and is also the first Middle Eastern country to have had a gay rights publication, Barra (“out” in Arabic).
