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REVIEWAGENDA
MUSIC
SlashByblos Port, ByblosJune 25, 8:30 p.m.01-999-666The Byblos InternationalFestival opens with a concertby Slash. The one-timeGuns’n’Roses guitar hero willbe joined on stage by MylesKennedy and The Conspirators.
Jad El KhechenSalon de Actos, CervantesInstitute, Maarad Street,DowntownJune 26, 7 p.m.01-970-253The winner of Lebanon’sNational Piano and GuitarContest will perform a mysteryprogram of Spanishguitar numbers.
PitbullForum de Beyrouth, KarantinaJune 28, 9 p.m.01-999-666Pitbull takes his world tour toBeirut. Are you ready to party?
‘Full on Ferry’Oceana Beach, DamourJuly 13, call for time03-333-503Acclaimed DJ Ferry Corstenreturns to Beirut. Rankedamong the top 10 DJs in theworld, he will electrify thebeach resort with trance music.
FILM
‘Vantage Point: The WorldRefugee Day Film Festival’Metropolis Cinema Sofil,AshrafiehJune 25-2901-204-080The first film festival by theUNHCR offers a selection offilms shedding light onmigration and resettlement.
‘Yamo’Metropolis Cinema Sofil,AshrafiehJune 28, call for screeningschedule01-204-080Scrapbook, the film cycledevoted to recent work byLebanese filmmakers,continues with Rami Nihawi’sintimate documentary about ofthe Civil War memories of hismother Nawal. In Arabic withEnglish subtitles.
ART
‘The Post Orientalists’South Border Gallery, RennoBuilding, Gouraud Street,GemmayzehJune 27 until July 1401-584-040This collective displays thework of Latin Americanpainters of Lebanese origin andsuch Cuban artists as RodolfoVadez Montes de Oca.
‘Wounds’Agial Art Gallery, Abdel AzizStreet, HamraUntil June 3001-345-213This exhibition featuresintriguing paintings byLebanese artists Youssef Aoun.
‘Boudoir’The Running Horse, MedawarDistrictUntil July 2501-562-778Mazen Fayad’s photographsdeploy special effects toexplore the beauty of women.
‘Works 1980-2012: HassanSharif’Galerie Sfeir-Semler, TannousBuilding, KarantinaUntil July 2101-566-550This show is comprised ofpaintings, sculptures, drawingsand writings by Hassan Sharif.
A man without ethics is a wildbeast loosed upon this world.
Albert CamusFrench writer(1913-1960)
JJuusstt aa tthhoouugghhtt
16 ARTS & CULTUREmonday, june 25, 2012
LEBANON A world of beasts in AshrafiehBy Chirine LahoudThe Daily Star
BEIRUT: “The animal,” saidgallerist Alice Mogabgab,“has become a symbol, thesubject of a piece of art.”
The gallerist is putting her moneywhere her mouth is. “Animal,” the cur-rent exhibition at Alice MogabgabGallery features works by20-odd artists, includingFrench painterCharles Belle,English sculp-tor EmmaRodgers,
Lebanon’s Fadia Haddad and HoudaKassatly and Japan’s Takayoshi Sak-abe, among others. The exhibition has a backstory.In late March of this year, Mogab-
gab participated in Art Paris, an exten-sive art fair that gathers galleries fromall over the world at the Grand Palais.The Mogabgab Gallery stand sportedan animal-themed display of paintingsand sculptures. After finding some suc-cess in the French capital, the galleristhas brought these works back to Beirut. “Animal” is curated by French film-
maker Luc Jacquet – best known as thewriter-director behind “The March of
the Penguins” (2005)and “The
Fox and the Child” (2008). He’s alsomade a film about snakes.Based on his oeuvre as a filmmak-
er, Jacquet is interested in animals, soit’s no surprise, perhaps, that he wasenthusiastic about assembling an exhi-bition on a similar theme. The filmmaker-turned-curator
stopped in Beirut for the opening of hisexhibition. “What interests me,” saidJacquet, “is diversity in people’simpressions of things.” This is pre-cisely what onlookers can expect fromhis exhibition.“Spider Seduction,” a mixed-media
work by Belgium’s Pascale Bernier,may have given goosebumps to anyarachnophobes in the house. The artisthas delicately pinned a tarantula to around piece of white embroidery – asgood an approximation of a spider’sweb as any human handicraft.
Like “Orville, the HelicopterCat,” by Dutch artist BartJansen, which recentlycaused a stir during Ams-terdam’s KunstRAI artfestival, Bernier’swork mingles artwith taxidermy tocreate a sort of stilllife sculpture. Aclose examina-tion will revealthe needle thatparalyzed thearachnid, likethe ones bugcollectors useon butterflies. There is
somethingskeletal – morepreciselyexoskeletal – inEmma Rodgers’bronze and ceramicsculptures, but thiscomparison shouldn’tbe read negatively.Although her slender ren-derings of dog, bear and
horse resemble shells, for alltheir hollowness they are imbued
with a great deal of power. Her bronze “L’Ours” (The Bear)
portrays the majestic animal with oneleg. What is startling is how – thoughthis bear only has one functional leg –
there is an impressive senseof how the piece radiatesmotion. It is as though thecreature’s bearing tran-scends matters of anatom-ical precision.Meandering through
the gallery, onlookerswill also find themselvesface-to-face with “Zebu”(55x74x31 cm), a metalsculpture by Lebanese sculptorFarid Zoghbi. If Rodgers’ work hasan exoskeletal quality, Zoghbi appearsto have taken a fancy to the skeleton. His metallic sculpture of the Zebu
(a humpbacked South Asian ox orcow) evokes an aspect of brutality yetalso fragility and elegance. The deli-cately applied metal bars effectivelysuggest the creature’s bone structure. “Animal” has provided an opportu-
nity for the works of Lebanon’sFadia Haddad toreturn to theMogabgab Gallery.Her mixed-media piece“Songeurs de Synonymes” (Dream-ers’ Synonyms, 162x130 cm) depictstwo birds. One occupies the center ofthe media while the second, smaller,one seems to be elevated on an uniden-tified circular item. Whether geese or storks,
the bird is omnipresent inHaddad’s paintings – as aremasks, which was the titleof her earlier November2010 exhibition at theMogagab Gallery.Luc Jacquet was en route
to Peru when he dropped byBeirut. There he plans toshoot a new film, “It Was aForest,” which will take asits subject (you guessed it)forests. The project will alsotake him to Gabon.The new film, he
explained, would minglefootage of what remains ofthe Peruvian forest with ani-mated representations ofwhat is invisible to thehuman eye – forest growth. Jacquethopes the film will capture in a fewhours what usually takes several cen-turies to actually transpire. The Frenchfilmmaker expects the film to see the
The latest exhibition of Alice MogabgabGallery explores wherewild things are
light of day next year.“Animal” is on display at Ashrafieh’s AliceMogabgab Gallery until July 28. For moreinformation, please call 03-210-424.Bernier’s “Spider Seduction” (2004) mixed media 100x100 cm.
Rodgers’ “Lucy”(2007) bronze80x39x39 cm.Photos courtesy of Alice Mogabgab
By Ramzi BashourThe Daily Star
BAISOUR, Lebanon: Overfour days and three nights, anunremitting thump of intensepsychedelic trance music
pulsed from the bottom of Lebanon’sBaisour valley and through the dampmountain air. The source was the BaoBaB Psyche-
delic Music Festival, the perpetrators alineup of 30 international and local“psytrance” DJs and artists.Named after the baobab tree (aka
adansonia digitata), the BaoBaB Psy-chedelic Music Festival was organizedby the Psyleb community, which set upcamp at the Baisour Country Club(some 5 km south of Aley) and kindlyinvited fellow psytrance aficionados tojoin in and camp out – for cover chargeof $85 at the door, or less during the pre-sale and late-bird periods.There were two venues. The “Stom-
p’in” stage was set up at a riverbank,replete with the sound of croakingfrogs. A smaller, slightly quieter,“Chill’in” area squat many windy,
ankle-threatening steps away. Once the event got started at noon
Thursday, the throbbing speakers rest-ed for a scheduled total of 14.5 hoursbefore being unplugged and packed up68 hours later, at 8 a.m. Sunday.But BaoBaB wasn’t only about
music. “The food is all super local andwholesome,” one organizer explained. Itwas also highly affordable. “In the morn-ing, you’re gonna wake up, eat reallywell and do yoga. That’s the idea here.”The event offered workshops on
organic agriculture Friday, along withmeditation and yoga sessions. Anearthy tea lounge was set up in anincense smoke-infused venue bound bygeometric cloth-art. Next door, a bodega-style market-
place sold glass paraphernalia. Nearby,fair-trade Nepalese clothing, associatedin certain circles with “hippie-fashion,”was on offer, as were wooden trinketsand imported, luxury-taxed salt lamps.The delicious smells of food, incense
and other evocative odors wafted richthrough the air and dogs of all dimen-sions roamed among the humans on thetent-festooned country club grounds.By the time the event wrapped,
organizers said psytrance festival-goersand DJs from India, the Netherlands,Jordan, England, Iran and Lebanon hadfound their way to Baobab. “It was a huge success,” one Psyleb
organizer reported in the waning hoursof the festival, estimating they’d host-ed some 250 attendees.It’s not a bad figure, considering the
recherché music, medium-to-small
size stages, and the challenging festi-val location – at the bottom of a dubi-ous, hairy mountain road – dubious, atleast, until the pounding rhythms aroseto guide the way.
BaoBaB: A psychedelicstart to the summer
Revellers got down to DJs from as far afield as India, Iran and the Netherlands.
Phot
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Woody Allen: I’m just praying that it’s not an embarrassmentBy Romain RaynaldyAgence France Presse
LOS ANGELES: Woody Allen says hecan’t stand watching any of his ownfilms – but the 76-year-old Americanfilmmaker has no plans to retire. Hejokes about his latest movie, “ToRome with Love,” in typically self-deprecating style.“‘To Rome with Love’ is a terrible
title. My original title was ‘BopDecameron,’ and nobody knew whatthe Decameron [a 14th century bookof stories by Italy’s Giovanni Boccac-cio] was,” he said. “Even the Italiansdidn’t know.“So I changed it to ‘Nero Fiddles,’
and half the countries in the world said‘We don’t know what that means. Wedon’t have the expression.’ Finally I set-tled on a generic title like ‘To Romewith Love,’ so everybody would get it.”The director, who famously makes
movies at the rate of more than one ayear, compared filmmaking to cooking.“When you make a film, it’s like a
chef who works on a meal. After work-ing all day in the kitchen, dicing andcutting and putting sauces on you don’twant to eat it,” he told reporters.“And that’s what I feel about a film.
I work on it for a year. I’ve written it.I’ve worked with the actors. I’ve edit-ed. I’ve put the music and I just neverwant to see it again.“When I begin a film, I always think
that I’m gonna make ‘The BicycleThief,’ ‘Grande Illusion’ or ‘CitizenKane’ and I’m convinced this is gonnabe the greatest thing that ever hit cel-
luloid,” he said.“And then, when I see what I’ve
done afterward, I’m just praying thatit’s not an embarrassment … I’ve nev-er liked any of them, and I’m alwaysthankful that the audience like some of
them in spite of my disappointment.”Allen’s fans concede that the direc-
tor has gone through weak periods.Most agree the last few years haveseen a return to form, and even com-mercial success.
His embarrassment about his ownmovies, he says, extends to classicslike “Annie Hall” (1977) and “Hannahand Her Sisters” (1986).In “Annie Hall,” “the relationship
between myself and Diane Keaton, that
was not what I cared about. That wasone small part of another big canvasthat I had,” he said. “In the end, I had toreduce the film to just the relationshipbetween me and Diane, so I was quitedisappointed in the end of that movie.”“To Rome with Love” tells parallel
stories about a series of couples. Itstars Penelope Cruz, Jesse Eisenberg,Ellen Page and Roberto Benigni. Allenreturns to the screen after a six-yearabsence, playing the father of a youngAmerican woman about to marry herItalian boyfriend.
“When I write the script, if there isa part for me, I take it. As I’m gettingolder, the parts diminish,” he said.“When I was younger, I could alwaysplay the lead in a movie … and it wasfun … Now, I’m older and I’m reducedto playing the backstage doorman orthe uncle. I don’t really love that.”He has no plans to retire. “Retirement
is a very subjective thing. Guys I knoware retired and they are very happy. Theytravel all over the world. They go fish-ing. They play with their grandchildrenand they never miss work at all.“Then there are other people. I’m
one of that kind, that love to work allthe time ... It could be that, sooner orlater, the guys that back my films getwise and say, ‘This is not really worthall the suffering,’ ... But I would stillwrite for the theater, or books.”Cruz heads up the all-star cast of “To Rome with Love.”
‘When you make afilm, it’s like a chefwho works on a meal’