The Beirut Art Film Festival (BAFF) was launched on September 14 and will continue until September 26, in partnership with the Italian Cultural Institute in Beirut.
The Festival was organized to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the death of the poet and “Father of the Italian language” Dante Alighieri.
In an act of pugnacious defiance, the friends and organizers of the BAFF were eager not to miss this worldwide celebration around Dante. From Beirut, from the bottom of its abyss, despite constraints and beyond obstacles, the will to live in decency and to exist through culture will overcome such monstrous bankruptcy into which Lebanon is struggling.
Alice Mogabgab, BAFF founder said: “Culture is today the last rampart of our society while everything is crumbling; bankruptcy must not, under any circumstances, become intellectual! And because art touches the heart only if it participates in the fight for dignity, it was essential that DANTE 700 be associated with the desire to rebuild the devastated neighborhoods of Beirut.”
Composer Dr. Nidaa Abou Mrad (Dean of the Faculty of Music and Musicology at the Antonine University) and the Medieval Music Ensemble of the Antonine University, author and actor Cesare Capitani, sociologist and Arabist Dr. Francesca Maria Corrao, film director Nicolas Khoury, art historian Dr. Giuseppe Rizzo, editor Diane de Selliers and poet Abdo Wazen, accepted the invitation of the BAFF, and contribute with their talents in this celebration of a certain Lebanon and the hope for an enlightened future.
The Festival includes evenings dedicated to Dante and The Divine Comedy through poetry, art, theater, film and music. Three “in person” evenings were held at the Dagher Residence, Gouraud Street. A jewel of Beirut architecture, this old house was ransacked by the August 4 double explosion then restored, as per rules of the art, by its owners.
Dates of the upcoming evenings (online):
21 September: Botticelli – Inferno, documentary, directed by Ralph Loop
22 September: “Dante – What is The Divine Comedy?” documentary, directed by Thierry Thomas
24 September: Screening of three films directed by Nicolas Khoury about architecture, dance and art. Followed by a discussion between the director and Alice Mogabgab, the Festival’s founder and film producer.
26 September: “Arab culture in the Divine Comedy”, discussion between Dr. Francesca Maria Corrao and Abdo Wazen.
For booking and more info:
Facebook: @BeirutArtFilmFestival
Instagram: @bafflb