Representing pollution at the agrarian-urban frontier: participatory documentary film‐making in Bar Elias, Lebanon

The Beqaa Valley in Lebanon has become increasingly polluted, and residents are attributing illness to improper waste disposal and dumping. This article explores local epistemologies of pollution’s causes and effects in three films, which were researched and produced by local residents of Bar Elias, a small town in the Beqaa, which has rapidly urbanized as a consequence of mass forced migration to the area. We approach pollution in Bar Elias as a form of slow violence whose causes and effects become more available to understanding through local epistemologies. The films speak through visuals of dirt, waste and discolouration, as well as inter‐generational and cross‐community storytelling. We suggest that the filmmakers are thus able to reign in the complex and dissipating connections between polluters and pollutants that challenge slow violence by adopting a spatial lens on broad struggles impacting Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian residents. This spatial lens foregrounds pollution as an outcome of Bar Elias’ location at the agrarian‐urban frontier—a distinct political geography from which we analyze power relations that create pollution and expose communities to harm. We argue that this political geography lens on the films offers a promising epistemology of slow violence.