Higher and higher, bigger and bigger. That was the Lebanese Rocket Society’s motto in the early to mid 1960s. A motto that was aspired to and upheld. But hang on a minute – THE LEBANESE ROCKET SOCIETY? Sounds improbable at best. Few people know of this forgotten footnote in Arab history, but this documentary, part of a wider education project, seeks to and succeeds in instilling in our memory the heyday and technologie de pointe of pre-Civil War Lebanon, the so-called Switzerland of the Middle East. The premise: Why the hell has no one ever told their story?

Immediately, an animated rocket cuts across a blank white screen as recollecting voiceovers speak of pursuing dreams and scientific revolution. That’s what this film is really about. Realising your wildest of dreams. Revolving around the life and studies of the twice-named Armenian-Lebanese Manoug Manougian, now a Maths professor in the States, here today at Cambridge Film Festival for a Q&A, this is a film for high-powered visionaries and lost, battling imaginations. He was inspired to launch rockets by reading ‘1,001 nights’ and ‘From The Earth To The Moon’, not exactly scientific bibles. Born in Jerusalem, he moved to Lebanon, a country with no funding and no propellants, unlike major Western powers. But after years of determination his dream became a reality. Rockets were fired 600km into the air.

Spacecraft propulsion is quite hard to get into, if you don’t know where to start.

Spacecraft propulsion is quite hard to get into, if you don’t know where to start. And the film – co-directed and narrated by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, two Parisian filmmakers intrigued by a ballistic image they spotted on a Lebanese stamp – traces the story from beginning to failure: from a pioneering student body skimping on lunch-breaks to intervening army officials, from rocketry to weaponry. But it all started at Haigazian College (whose Armenian demographic provides an interesting aside on the early 20th century genocide), where Manougian taught. Whether it’s firing a toy-sized rocket into a mountain-side (a near-miss with a Greek Orthodox church), hand-making rocket fuel, or nearly accidentally sinking a Cypriot boat, a sense of peaceful if amateurish delight seeps through the project’s roots. Understanding the scientific methodology of space exploration was the sole aim. Violence was a no-go.

That’s not what it looked like to the outside world, however. In the grubby hands of the military what had been patriotic, headline-grabbing reconnaissance missioning became diplomatic dynamite and a power-struggle in waiting, all evidence readily concealed by the government. No more space racing; martial not Martian intentions ruled supreme. Of course, the States and Russia were having none of it. Their spies knew the lot. And neither were the French, who are posited as the spoilsport nation who “requested” that the programme be called to a close. Shame, because a national wonder was being put down. Manougian and his companions had built a two-stage rocket with next-to-no investment – a remarkable feat in itself. A source of Lebanese pride and unification had disintegrated into the shadows of a distant past. The scientists themselves had emigrated. The Civil Wars beckoned. And as one interviewee in the film states, ‘dreaming was confiscated’. In came oblivion.

Throughout, Hadjithomas and Joreige provide a step-by-step investigation in which archival snippets are woven together with present-day interviews. The execution is sublime and not for one minute contrived nor overly nostalgic. After all, most people don’t have a clue this ever happened. In its essence this is surreal subject-matter and the outcome is a bridge created – or rather, restored – between the past and present, a vital monument to a forgotten part of Lebanese history and a clarion call for emancipation in the modern Arab World. As Manougian relates after the film, the spring-time revolts promised definite hope, and who knows, perhaps – perhaps – peace-loving spacecraft will be heard catapulting around Beirut’s halcyon hills some time in the near future. How alien-like that would seem.

THE LEBANESE ROCKET SOCIETY screens on Saturday 21st at 18.15. CFF hopes to welcome Manoug Manougian to the screening. Buy tickets here.