Biography

German born Monika Börgmann studied Arab philology and political sciences in Bonn and Damascus.

From 1990 – 2001 she worked as a freelance journalist for radio and press in Cairo while travelling throughout the Middle East and North Africa. In 2001 she moved to Lebanon while beginning research for the award-winning documentary film Massaker, which was shown in Disorientation II.

Massaker is a harrowing recounting of the 1982 massacres in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps during the Lebanese Civil War.  In chilling interviews, six members of the Israeli-trained and backed Christian Phalange militia reveal graphic and shocking details of atrocities, many of which these men personally committed.

Börgmann co-directed the film with her Lebanese partner Lokmann Slim, with whom she also founded UMAM Production in 2001 and later in 2004 UMAM Documentation and Research, an organisation that engages with issues of civil violence and war memories in Lebanon and other countries that have witnessed violent conflict. Working with art and archives, UMAM has undertaken major projects including Civil Violence and War Memories Here and Elsewhere (2006), and What is to be Done? Lebanon’s War-Loaded Memory (2008). Other work includes Le Balcon (2007) and Sur Place - 4 Revenants des Guerres Libanaises (2009).

October 2010