The Lebanese Art Cinema Association – Metropolis Cinema was founded in 2006 as a response to the lack of circulation of independent films in the country. The launch of the film program took place in a small theatre-turned-into-cinema in the Hamra neighborhood of Beirut on the 11th of July, one day before the start of the July 2006 war with Israel. The venue had to close its doors the next morning, becoming within the following days -due to its underground location - a shelter for many displaced families (mostly children) coming from the southern suburbs of the city and the south of Lebanon (two areas heavily bombed by Israeli armed forces). In order to keep the children indoors, the team started to screen films for them. This is how the first young audience activity of the association came to be, engraining cinema exposure to youth within the core of Metropolis’ mission.
After the end of the war in august 2006, Metropolis resumed its activities and projections, programing various festivals, retrospectives, film cycles, and special events in the one screen 80-seater theatre cinema in Hamra.
In 2008, as the audience and the demand for independent cinema grew bigger, the association moved to the Empire-Sofil cinema in Achrafieh, a two-screen venue the association has been programming since then.
During the following year the association’s young audience activities grew to include a program organized in partnership with schools in Lebanon that reached children across Beirut, Jounieh, Deir el Qamar, Tripoli and Zahleh.
The Metropolis Association set in motion its industry training program with the first edition of Talents Beirut in 2014 (for young Arab cinema professionals) in partnership with the Berlinale Talents and the first edition of the Beirut Locarno Industry Academy International in 2018 (for emerging programmers, distributors and sales agents in the region) in partnership with the Locarno Festival Industry Academy program.
Dissemination of movie heritage has always been within the association’s main objectives with different retrospectives and cycles allowing the audience to discover Lebanese and international film classics, it was in 2018 that the Cinematheque Beirut project was officially launched as an initiative solely dedicated to the conservation of Lebanese cinema heritage.
In January 2020, a few months after the beginning of the October 2019 uprising in Lebanon and a few months before the start of the global pandemic, the Sofil cinema was closed down and Metropolis lost its permanent screening venue. Thus, in 2020, the Association focused on internal restructuring and setting new guidelines and policies related to governance, finances and values.
Despite the various challenges that were faced due to the economic collapse, the aftermath of the port explosion and the COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, Metropolis was able to resume its various public programs in 2021 decentralizing and expanding its activities to 11 locations across the country.