By Laure Guirguis

I would like to share a story that sparked my curiosity when I started my new research project on the cultural entanglements between the Arab world and Latin America, with a focus on Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. The most intriguing part of this story lies in the long-lasting mystery surrounding the destiny and movies of its three main characters. Is there still hope to dispel the mystery?

Nabih Schamun, José Dial, and Roberto Kouri (Arabic names as spelled in Argentina) were born in present-day Lebanon and migrated to Argentina in the early 20^th century. In 1927, they formed the Oriente Film production company and began to work with many prominent figures of the Arab-Argentinian art scene of the time, such as Gibran Trabulsi (Chic Chic Bey), who had himself met with Egyptian actor Naguib el-Rihani (Kish Kish Bey) (whose memories regarding his trip to Latin America leave the reader yearning for more, as he almost exclusively talks of trivial issues, such as money, sickness, and visa problems, while not providing valuable information about the people he met in Buenos Aires or in the other cities that he visited in Brazil and Uruguay). The three friends again crossed the Atlantic to shoot a movie in today’s Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, and Turkey. In 1928, they premiered the film La Attración del Oriente at the Buenos Aires Grand Splendid Theater and undertook a journey across Argentina to screen the movie. It is a journey we can track in the newspapers established by Arab migrants, especially in La Gaceta árabe and in El Eco de Oriente, a newspaper established by Naguib Baaclini, a Lebanese man who had settled in Tucumán and who was a founding member of the Syrian-Lebanese Society and of the Lebanese Association.

This was a movie with a cause: by displaying their homeland’s cultural richness, they intended to restore Arabs’ dignity and self-worth. Certainly, they also hoped that other immigrant groups or even Creoles might attend the screenings. Indeed, during the interwar era, most Latin American countries struggled to define their national identity and migration policies by giving priority to allegedly modern and progressive ideas and people, hence to whites and Western Europeans, rather than to indigenous, blacks, or ‘turcos’. Diplomatic efforts were therefore aimed at Europe, and Latin America often found itself torn between the at times diverging interests of the United States and Europe. Arab migrants thus stressed Arab figures’ achievements in the host country. Beyond the stereotype of the Arab peddler, and in an attempt to challenge the stigma Arabs experienced as ‘turcos’, newspapers published in Arabic and/or in Spanish by Arab migrants were eager to foreground Arabs’ contribution to the industrialization of their host countries (which was of special importance in mainly agrarian Argentina) and to the development of economic and cultural life. Yet, they also expressed a sense of pride about their region of origin, as epitomized by Nabih Schamun, José Dial, and Roberto Kouri’s fascinating experience and movie.

The movie, alas, has been lost, and this is the first mystery and the first search: is there still hope to find it somewhere, taking into account the archival mess in Lebanon and, even more, in Argentina?

The destiny of the three protagonists also remains pretty vague. They seem to melt into air. In the case of Nabih Schamun, this is quite understandable: he died in 1930. Focusing on Argentina, Lily Ballofet totally loses track of Kouri and Dial. Dial is supposed to have returned to Lebanon and continued working in the film industry there (Lily Balloffet. 2020. Argentina in the Global Middle East. SUP). However, I could not find any information on the Lebanese side. For her part, Christine Ehrick, who specialises in the study of early cinema in Latin America, came across Kouri and analysed his movie Del Pingo al Volante (1929, Montevideo), ‘filmed as a part of a big fundraising pushed by the Bonne Garde’, a Uruguayan beneficent association: ‘The director was Roberto Kouri, a man who remains a bit of a mystery. According to Zapiola, Kouri was a “Lebanese who got off a boat in the port of Montevideo in 1928, said he knew how to make movies...finished his work . . . and disappeared into thin air.”’ (Christine Ehrick. 2006. ‘Beneficent Cinema: State Formation, Elite reproduction and Silent Film in Uruguay, 1910-1920.’ The Americas 62, 2) The movie is available and has even been restored:

www.youtube.com/watch

Finally, Geraldo Campos – a Brazilian scholar who is a founding member of the recent ArabLatinos project, supported by the UNESCO – seems to be providing a few additional pieces of information on the three men: they apparently left for Brazil on the ship Conto Rosso, with the intention of screening La Atración del Oriente in São Paulo on 30 August 1928. Between August and September of that year, Schamun and Dial filmed in companies, clubs, and other social spaces of the prominent members of the Syrian-Lebanese community, from Santos to São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia. Gradually the project was expanded, encompassing the Arab communities in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay (Geraldo Campos. 2014. ‘The multiple territories of the cinematographic space: the last station between Brazil and the Arab countries’). According to Campos: ‘In 1930, the film was called The Syrian and the Lebanese in the Americas and it was finished in 1936.’ Yet, in 1936, Schamoun was dead, and no one, including Campos, can definitely be sure of anything now.

The destiny of these three men has aroused the interest of a few people working on art and culture in the Latin-Arab space. This was one of the starting points of my investigation. I look forward to hearing more about them and their movies, should there still be a trace of them and should you have the beginning of an answer!

Yet, the history of cultural entanglements between the Arab world and Latin America spans over a century. As a first, collective, outcome of this ongoing project, I invite you to read the forthcoming volume Art and Politics between the Arab World and Latin America, co-edited with Maru Pabón and to be published by Brill in early 2025, and would be glad to discuss it with you.