The Lebanese Rocket Society (uncertificated) 93 mins **
Lebanon’s modest
contribution to the Sixties space race – the society formed at Beirut’s
Haigazian University by Professor Manoug Manougian – is here reclaimed as a
source of optimism: it encouraged students from across the Middle East to fire
rockets skywards, rather than at each other. Yet this dour-seeming documentary
only succeeds in framing the Society’s efforts as so much elaborate tinkering –
a science-fair project that briefly caught eyes before being consigned to
history’s attic. The flat-footed investigative approach, shuffling between
archives, hardly helps; only with a belated attempt to reconstruct the rockets
does the film poke its head beyond the shed door.
The Lebanese Rocket Society opens in selected cinemas from today.
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