Lost: Return to Beirut

Join Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture for a musical-visual art performance at Kimmel’s-SEI Innovation Studio with the talented pianist, Rami Khalife. Interested in this event? Keep an eye out for the registration link! LOST/Return to Beirut is a cine concert highlighting a meeting of a feature film and a documentary with a powerful solo piano performance. The return of Rami Khalife to his homeland, Lebanon, is a rediscovery of his country that he painfully left as a child because of the war, a scar of the exodus that has never healed. Return to Beirut is the work of painter, photographer, and director François Rousseau. About LOST: LOST is the most personal work that Rami has ever composed and puts the entirety of the album (13 titles) into an image. This film is his story, his suffering and his fragility, a sensitive, violent and inventive dialogue with his instrument. For the film, the piano from his childhood was lifted to the top of a building under construction, near Byblos, to an open platform overlooking Beirut and the Mediterranean Sea. The camera captured these bright moments when Rami interpreted his album. The film is conceived as a road-trip movie, going from place to place, physically very close to each other, yet clearly distinct.