Closed for decades, theater returns to Lebanon’s Tripoli

By AJ NADDAFF
Associated Press

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP) — Lebanon’s second city, known for crushing poverty, extremism and outbound migration, seems an unlikely place for a cultural revival. But the northern port city of Tripoli has a long cinematic tradition, once boasting 35 movie houses and Lebanon’s first cinema. A Lebanese actor and director is now seeking to restore some of that past glory by turning the city’s long abandoned Empire Cinema building into a working theater. Several days a week, his team — which includes a Syrian, a Palestinian, a Lebanese and a Bangladeshi — drives three hours from their homes in the country’s south to work on the space, built in the early 1940s but abandoned for decades.