Lebanese rockets are invited to the Doha Design Biennale by film images. Opened on November 5, the exhibition « Atlas of Cinematic Affinities » welcomes the work of Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. It is held until 31 January 2027 in the Fereej Al Asmakh district. The project recalls a scientific adventure born in Beirut in the early 1960s.
Presented by the Doha Film Institute, the exhibition accompanies the second edition of Doha Design. Qatar Museums entrusts it to Zaina Bseiso and Nathalie Elmir. His talk focuses on film materials: images, sounds, gestures, archives and relationships between movement and immobility.
Lebanese rockets in an archive journey
According to a press report, the route shows images related to « The Lebanon Rocket Society » in light boxes. This documentary by Hadjithomas and Joreige recaptures the story of a group of Lebanese researchers and students. The photographs thus join a collection dedicated to the links between cinematographic creation, documents and memory.
This presence is part of an exhibition dedicated to cinema materials. Qatar Museums describes a movement between film, book and space. The images and sounds leave their original context to relate to other elements of the course.
According to the same report, the scheme also includes a dialogue between the Afghan archives and the work of filmmaker Mohannad Yaqubi. The Lebanese sequence takes place in this collective approach. The archives thus become objects to watch, beyond the narratives that the films compose from them.
Research born in Haigazian
The filmmakers place the beginnings of the Lebanese Rocket Society at the Armenian establishment Haigasian in Beirut. The professor of mathematics Manug Manugian accompanies a group of students. Their project aims to study and explore science through the design of rockets.
In their production notes, Hadjithomas and Joreige recall the launch of Cedar rockets in the 1960s. A stamp representing Cedar IV celebrates even the twenty-first anniversary of Lebanon’s independence. The artists emphasize the progressive erasure of this experience in collective memory. Their research brings together documents, archives and reconstructions to find traces of this ambition.
The work goes beyond the documentary. The Pompidou Centre preserves a photograph of the « Lebanese Rocket Society » series, dated 2012. It belongs to the « Restaged » component. The museum links this work to the staging of the transport of a rocket in Beirut. Its silhouette recalls a missile, while the artistic project returns to a scientific experience.
From the book published in May to the exhibition in November
The exhibition extends a publication that the Doha Film Institute announced on May 16, 2026 for its fifteen years. Invited filmmakers shared notebooks, family documents and other elements of their work. The Institute reported receiving over 8,000 pages of contributions related to projects supported in more than 80 countries.
These contributions contributed to the work of selecting and designing the book. The transition to exposure makes it possible to present these preparatory materials differently. Zaina Bseiso was the editor of the publication and Nathalie Elmir her artistic design.
For the Lebanese public, the route gives new visibility to images already worked by the duo. These images are similar to the visual research of other filmmakers within the same space. The exhibition remains on the Qatar Museums calendar until 31 January 2027.
Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas at the Valencià Institute of Modern Art, April 5, 2017. Portrait archives: This photograph does not show the Doha Biennale 2026. Whole photo preserved and edited under CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. © Juan García / Valencià Institute of Modern Art, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
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