MEDIA & PRESS
Since its release, Lebanon…Imprisoned Splendour has been written about, screened, and celebrated across multiple continents, in the English-language press as well as Arabic publications. Here is a sampling of the articles that were written about Daizy and the film over a decade.
Daizy being interviewed by former Channel Nine Today Show host, Elizabeth Hayes in July 1996 after winning award for Best Documentary at US International Film and Video Festival.
Press
The Weekend Australian, 11-12 March 1989: "Journey Home"
“The scarred face of the war began to show, as did the pitiful human flotsam.” Seven years before the film existed, Daizy wrote her own dispatch after a six-week return to Lebanon in 1988, as a young journalist driving through bombed-out West Beirut, past children begging in the street, finding a city that had, in her words, “adopted a survival etiquette,” rescheduling its days around the shelling and getting on with life anyway. It’s the earliest trace on record of the journey that eventually became her film.
Sydney Morning Herald, 18 July 1996: "Desperately Seeking Omar" by Brook Turner
“He wanted me to get my house back.” The story of how an unknown, first-time filmmaker talked her way into a hotel bar in the south of France and came out with Omar Sharif, the star of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, attached to her film.
The Australian, July 1996: "Lebanon’s Soul" by Greg Sheridan
“A remarkable and brilliant documentary.” The paper’s own foreign editor argued the wars of the 1970s and 80s were never really about religion, but about power and money, and that Gedeon proves it by putting the question to the very leaders who fought them.
The Sunday Telegraph, 18 August 1996: "Daizy puts her heritage in focus" by Piers Akerman
“My story is no different to any other migrant’s story.” A profile built almost entirely from Daizy’s own reflections on identity, on being raised Lebanese in Australia, and on why she believes religion should stay out of how governments treat migrant communities.
The Australian Magazine, 21-22 September 1996: "Coming Home" by Daizy Gedeon
“This is my story. And, in fact, it is every immigrant’s story.” Daizy’s own essay on growing up called a “wog” and a “Lebbo,” on denying her own heritage through her twenties, and on the six-week trip back to Lebanon in 1988 that undid all of it. She closes it by writing that success comes from passion and honesty, “with or without the trophies.”
The Boston Globe, 11 September 1996: Shorts Program V, reviewed by Betsy Sherman
“A fine personal documentary.” Sherman described it as a blend of history lesson, travelogue, testimony and personal reflection, screening in the same festival programme, that same week, as Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez’s The War at Home.
Los Angeles Times, 25 September 1997: "A Tribute to the People of Lebanon" by Kevin Thomas
“[Gedeon] felt the need to come to terms with the country she left with her family in 1970.” Ahead of the film’s Beverly Hills season, Thomas wrote that Daizy set out to fill what he called the gap between anger and poverty in how Lebanon had been shown to the world.
Also Featured In
- The Courier-Mail, 31 Dec 1996: “Lebanon is a very cosmopolitan country, not simply a war zone,” Daizy told the paper, on the Chicago win and the coming US release
- The Daily Telegraph, 1996: She’d chased Omar Sharif around France, mortgaged and then sold her house, and raised more than $400,000, all to make her first film. Her line about Lebanon being “a very cosmopolitan country, not simply a war zone” was clearly her standard answer that week, it ran almost word for word in the Courier-Mail too
- The Daily Telegraph, 23 May 1997: reported Daizy was on a world tour trying to raise the US$50,000 to $60,000 needed to resubmit the film for the Academy Awards
- The Inner West Weekly, 1996: “I saw an injustice and a misrepresentation,” Daizy said, on why she made the film at all
- The Jewish Journal, 19 Sept 1997: previewed the film’s one-week Los Angeles engagement, narrated by Omar Sharif
- Los Angeles Times, 28 Sept 1997: the Now Playing listing called it “a beautiful and moving account of Lebanon’s ancient culture and endurance”
- LA Weekly / OC Weekly, 26 Sept to 2 Oct 1997: critic Paul Malcolm opened with the words of Gibran, read by Omar Sharif in the film: “Your Lebanon is an international problem yet to be solved. Mine is calm enchanted valleys.” He was struck by the contrast, warning the film’s warmth still carries “the stuff of propaganda no less worrisome” than the coverage it’s answering. Both of these sister papers ran the same review that week
Arabic Press
Al Hayat, 16 January 1997
شريط متفائل عن لبنان يقدمه بحرارة عمر الشريف
“An optimistic film about Lebanon, presented warmly by Omar Sharif”
One of the Arab world’s major international papers picked up the story after the Chicago win, running a substantial interview filed from Sydney. The piece walks through how Daizy secured Omar Sharif’s involvement and his three days of filming, and her account of what convinced him, that the project felt honest rather than commercial. It closes on her hope that the film reaches Lebanese audiences everywhere, in Australia and beyond.
An-Nahar, 30 July 1996: Arts section
روت قصة اقناعها عمر الشريف للاشتراك في الفيلم
“She told the story of convincing Omar Sharif to join the film”
“Lebanon’s beauty is stronger than violence.” One of the fullest Arabic-language accounts of the Omar Sharif chase, told to journalist Anwar Harb shortly after the Chicago win. Daizy also discusses screening the film for the American Task Force for Lebanon, and argues her mission was never political, only a refusal to let violence define how the world sees Lebanon.
An-Nahar, December 1996
ديزي جدعون مخرجة فيلم "لبنان البهاء المأسور": صورة لبنان الأخرى
“Daizy Gedeon, director of ‘Lebanon the Imprisoned Splendour’: another image of Lebanon”
“Not at all, not even in my wildest dreams.” Asked by Robert Brauninger whether she’d expected this level of success, that’s how Daizy answered. The interview covers where the title came from, why Omar Sharif needed so little convincing, he told her in their first meeting that he had never stopped loving Lebanon even though he’d never gone back, and the distorted image of Lebanese people in the Australian media that she set out to correct.
Al-Nahar, 21 November 1996
دايزي جدعون...شكرًا
“Daizy Gedeon… Thank You”
Not a review, a poem. The Lebanese writer Naeem Khoury dedicated an original piece of verse to Daizy on the film’s release, addressing her directly and thanking her, in his words, for knowing Lebanon and for carrying its message to the world. A tribute in the same literary register the film itself draws on through Gibran.
An-Nahar (Australia supplement), 23 July 1996
فيلم ديزي جدعون عن لبنان يفوز بالجائزة الفضية من بين 1500 فيلم
“Daizy Gedeon’s film on Lebanon wins the Silver Award among 1500 films”
A brief report on the Chicago win, tracing the story back to her family’s move to Australia in 1970 when she was four, her early career in journalism, and the 1987 trip to Lebanon that changed her view of the country. It notes the film was picked up by further festivals in Canada, Britain and France, and was, at the time of writing, being put forward for Academy Award consideration, with Omar Sharif appearing without a fee.
Nahar Sydney, 24 December 1996
دايزي جدعون تواصل احتفالات الترويج لفيلمها لبنان الاشراقة السجينة بحضور المئات في صالة البلفيو
“Daizy Gedeon continues promotional celebrations for her film Lebanon the Imprisoned Splendour, with hundreds in attendance at the Bellevue Hall”
Society-page coverage of one of several Sydney promotional nights held that year, several hundred guests including community leaders and clergy, with speeches from the floor before the film itself was screened.
Anba Al Arab, 1 April 1997
اللبنانية الأولى تعمل على إعادة إعمار المجتمع اللبناني
“Lebanon’s First Lady works to rebuild Lebanese society”
Coverage of a Las Vegas event honouring Lebanon’s First Lady, Mona Al-Harawi, hosted by Sheikh Raymond Abi Rashed Dousaj under the American Task Force for Lebanon, where the film screened as part of the evening’s program. Daizy appears among the guests in several of the event photographs, though the piece isn’t primarily about her.
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