From Basim: "Filming them quietly from a table on the stage is Kassem Istanbouli, a Lebanese actor and theater manager. A proponent of cultural life across southern Lebanon, he is seeking to encourage an interest in the arts among Tyre’s youth as an alternative to the drudgery of daily life and the potential lure of the militant Shiite Hezbollah organization. “Any city that does not have cinema, theater, or art is a city of death,” says Mr. Istanbouli. “Cinema is life, and the arts is beauty.” “We are trying to build a culture of life against the culture of death,” he says."
Basim
PS: I found this article condescending in tone and content. And is this true? Amal is roundly known to be a group of thugs, at least among Shiites in Beirut I know. Do Tyre's residents feel differently? I doubt it:
"The mainly Shiite residents – there are sizeable Christian and Sunni communities – tend to be easygoing and prefer Amal’s more moderate politics to Hezbollah’s, which follows Iran’s system of theocratic rule."
