At the end of a little side street in the Beirut neighborhood of Ras Beirut, a faded poster points the way. If you follow the sign, head up a steep path to the left and through a heavy door, you'll find yourself between tall bookshelves. Novels, political analyses, out-of-print editions about the culture and history of the region.
A few steps further, around the corner you'll enter a second room. And here the atmosphere changes, it's more dense and colourful. It's here where poster heaven begins. Fascinating colors, so many faces, and typographies from over a century of trends in print.
There, at the back of the store, sits Abboudi Bou Jaoude, friendly, unassuming, always ready to tell a story. Behind him, Lebanese and Egyptian film posters from the 1960s and 70s, alongside posters from Iraq, Tunisia and Morocco. In between, there are magnets, postcards and coasters. An archive, but one that is alive and ready to evoke memories.
"This shop is an archive for Lebanon, but also for the entire region," Bou Jaoude says. With more than 20,000 posters, his collection is considered one of the largest of its kind in the region. Many of the posters now hang in private homes — and even in the nearby Cafe Kalei, where film enthusiasts sip espresso while gazing at the faces of iconic Lebanese singers Fairuz or a young Sabah.
"I was already going to the cinema at the age of six," the 66-year-old says. "My father always took me along, he was the director of various cinemas in Bourj Hammoud, a predominantly Armenian suburb of Beirut." While other children played football, Bou Jaoude sat in the dark, absorbing the cinema of his city.
Around the age of 14, he began collecting cinematic memorabilia, initially unintentionally, because he always just got posters from the cinemas. This was in the early 1970s.
"Like many teenagers back then, I wasn't particularly interested in Arab films, I was more into foreign films. But I liked reading Arabic books," he said.
To understand why Bou Jaoude's archive is so unique, it's important to know about the role that Lebanon used to play in Arab cinema.
Officially, the first Lebanese film was made in 1929, but local production remained in the shadow of Egypt's film industry for a long time. With Lebanon's independence and an economic boom, this changed. The 1960s were a golden era and Beirut became a regional center for literature and film. In 1965, UNESCO opened the Arab Cinema Center in Beirut, a regional hub for film in the Arab world and the first of its kind. In 1971, Beirut hosted the first international film festival in the region.
Beirut also had over 300 cinemas, with new films playing every week. "The cinema was for many a first destination," says Bou Jaoude. "Before the civil war, people went to the cinema every week."
All of this came to an abrupt end with the civil war, which went from 1975 to 1990 and nearly destroyed the cinema scene. Bou Jaoude preserved what remained — film by film, poster by poster. Decades later, he compiled this knowledge in a book, a comprehensive documentation of Lebanese cinema through posters from 1929 to 1979.
He never thought that one day he would be considered one of the most important collectors in the region. It wasn't until the 1990s, he says, that he understood the value of these posters. "At the beginning of my collecting, I didn't realize what I was contributing."
Today, he sees each poster as a historical document. "These posters are an expression of what society wanted at the time, what it was interested in, and what it wanted to see in the cinema, what it dreamed of."
Yet his archive includes much more than just film posters from Lebanon. During his work as a publisher — he founded the Al Furat publishing house in 2000 — he regularly traveled through the region.
One of his most valuable sub-collections comes from Iraq; he has around 4,000 posters from there. "I always made sure to take an extra two or three days to visit local cine (EN): The man saving L... mas. And there, I always asked if I could get a poster."
Other posters in his collection come from Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and places like the Palestinian refugee camp in Yarmouk, Syria. In the 1960s, when Egyptian films were banned in Syria, small cinemas carefully preserved their posters. "The staff would often sell them to me for a few lira."
Sometimes he came across posters that had long been lost in the country they came from. During the time of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian films were banned in Iraq. "So the film reels were simply smuggled through Lebanon to make it look like the film came from here," he explans.
Many visitors to the store are young Lebanese looking for something that connects them to a past they only know from stories, he notes. Others no longer live in the country. "Many have emigrated and are looking for something that reminds them of home or tells them something about their parents' or grandparents' past."
He often sees the reaction in the faces of the people who watched the films in the cinemas or heard about them from their families. "When people come in here and see a poster of the singer and actress Fairuz, they remember a time that many have pushed aside. People have forgotten a lot due to the war."
When asked if he has a favorite poster, he smiles almost apologetically. "I can't decide, but I especially like the posters from the 1960s and early 70s." It sounds like the answer of a man who knows every film, every color, every crease of a poster and wants to preserve them all.
If you head back out onto the street of Ras Beirut, something of this place lingers. The feeling that the past doesn't fade, as long as someone guards it. That is what Bou Jaoude is doing, albeit quietly, modestly, in a shop that is more of a cultural and emotional archive than a business.
This article was originally published in German.