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Tania EL KHOURY, Lebanese Cinemas and their Publics. In Lebanon a long period of civil war contributed to a calling into question of social and inter-ethnic relationships. The recent history of Lebanese cinema reveals social and cultural contradictions contained beneath the surface which violently exploded between 1975 and 1990. The beginning of the civil war in 1975 changed film production with the destruction of a developed infrastructure including both film studios and movie theatres. After the war, commercial cinema was replaced by a new current of film production animated by young, foreign filmmakers and by returned exiles.