"Mirrors of Time": Our Battle With the Media

After “Bouh al-Sanabel” (written by Fathallah Omar 2018) and “Faraj and Rahma” (written by Muhammad al-Nabulsi 2019), Syrian director Muhammad Yassin Waqf continues his journey with the “Beirut International Center for Artistic Production” for the third year in a row, and this year will be over Through the "Mirrors of Time" (initial name - writing by Fathallah Omar), which he depicts in the towns of Kayfoun and Al-Kumatiyya (Mount Lebanon) to be ready for display at the start of the month of Ramadan next April. Working, according to his director, is relatively far from what the Beirut Center usually produces, in terms of not relying on the tales of the resistance and the details of military operations directly, and being more in touch with community issues and problems, without the center abandoning its permanent message and its belief that art is a weapon in a battle Bigger and more comprehensive.

And the battle presented by the action on one side of it is the media conquest of our society and its frightening effect leading to its ruin of societies and the destruction of entire countries on the human and moral levels, and the difficulty of controlling its path and controlling its results from the small entities (families) to the larger entity (the country). The story revolves around the timber merchant “Ragheb” (Mazen Moadam), who is exposed to a series of successive problems that start with the burning of the wood warehouse owned by him and his cousin “Hossam” (Mahdi Fakhreddin) while the latter is inside him, and accusing him of causing fire, and does not end with videos that are published successively on Social media appears in an unknown woman who deals every time with a member of his family, accompanied by heinous accusations attached to evidence that appear convincing to the recipient, without the official responsible for preparing and publishing these videos, as well as other lines beautifully dealing with corruption cases (through the personality of the official "Glory" performed by Alan To Zogby) and promoting the spread of the phenomenon of drug abuse (through personal «Knight» sister pair «Ragheb» performed by Nicolas Mazhar) and others.

Waqaf believes that the characters are drawn with great care, confirming his complete satisfaction with the names participating in the series, which were chosen according to the suitability of each of them for the role away from the stardom ratio, indicating that some actors apologize for their association with other works, but the combination “is completely homogeneous and guarantees everyone’s existence In its proper place. ” The director praises Mazen Moadam's performance in the role of "Ragheb", explaining that he is not an absolute hero for the work, which can be considered as a collective championship that is distributed on a number of characters almost equally, so that the character of the passive hero "Haitham" (Hassan Farhat) is no less important and specific than "willing".

He believes that the participation of the artist Ahmed Al-Zein is a "great gain" for the work, as it overlooks the role of "Abu Qasim Tarikh", a talkative barber who claims to know the history of the families of the town in which the events take place, and accordingly, this history falsifies the desires of those who pay more.

When we asked him about the difference between "Bouh al-Sanabel" and "Mirrors of Time", both of which are for the same writer, director and producer, praises Waqf for the texts of Fathallah Omar, indicating that he had first seen the text after its completion and was "beautiful and coherent", but coordination between him and Omar regarding "Mirrors of Time" started early, so that he accompanied his writing episode by episode as a close friend of the writer before the director's identity became known and before he decided to assign the mission to him, which saved him a lot of trouble later on, and it was in the interest of the work of course. Waqf expects the series to be strongly competitive because of "his own power factors", without entering into the hypothesis of a possible benefit from the reluctance of some producers to enter the battlefield this season due to the prevailing conditions in the country.

Some of the most prominent Lebanese actors participate in the expected work, including: Pauline Haddad, Joy Al-Hani, Jean Kassis, Naama Badawi, Carol Aboud, Sarah Kassir, Uday Raad, Suheir Nasser Al-Din, Hassan Hamdan, Mohamed Shams, Hind Khadra, Sally Basma, Ali Saad, Marcel Jabbour, Rabih Al-Hajj, Faten Al-Taweel, Jamal Hamdan and others.