BEIRUT — Lebanon reopened on Thursday the Cinematheque Libanaise, a national archive dedicated to preserving the country’s cinematic history, in a move that could provide a cultural haven as the country endures nearly three years of ongoing hostilities.Lebanese Minister of Culture Ghassan Salame attended the ceremony at the National Library in Beirut, the state-run news agency reported. An exhibition featuring a collection of Lebanese film archives was also opened to the public at the library.Local initiatives to preserve cinemaThe Cinematheque Libanaise was founded in 1999 by then-Minister of Culture Mohammed Youssef Baydoun. It was part of a series of cultural initiatives launched after UNESCO named Beirut the Arab Cultural Capital for 1999.The Cinematheque Libanaise was based at the Ministry of Culture offices in the Verdun district of Beirut where a dedicated hall hosted catalog films, photographs and documents related to Lebanese cinema. The move aimed to safeguard the country’s cinematic memory and collect audiovisual material documenting the history of filmmaking in the country.Cinematheque Libanaise was eventually shut down due to endemic bureaucracy and corruption. It is not clear when the national archive was closed, but local reports suggest it was nearly a decade ago.The national archive was not the first attempt to preserve Lebanon’s cinematic and film heritage. The idea dates back to 1969, when Maurice Akl, one of the founders of the Beirut Film Club, began collecting films and documents for what would have been the country’s first film archive, Lebanese filmmaker Nour Ouayda told Saint Joseph University in a 2019 interview. Akl's collection was destroyed in 1975 when a shell hit his office in downtown Beirut at the start of the civil war.