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Lebanon’s Oldest Cinema Gives Shelter To Displaced As Cultural NGO Strives To Keep People & The Arts Alive
Tripoli's 90-year-old Empire Cinema-turned-cultural center run the Tiro Association for Arts is now home to families who have fled
Amid the escalating war between Israel and Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, these cinema theaters are being repurposed yet again as shelters for people displaced from Southern Lebanon and the capital of Beirut by Israeli military action. The Nabatieh hub, situated in the former Stars Cinema, which lay abandoned for 30 years until its reopening in 2016, is currently closed after the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of the city and surrounding villages, ahead of its missile strikes targeting Hezbollah and ongoing ground operation. Tyre is now a ghost town with much of its some 135,000-strong population having fled due for fear of being killed in Israeli strikes, although some people remain, and the cinema is sheltering a handful of displaced families at the same time as laying on rudimentary art workshops.
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