“Film-making, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people.â€
Launched in 2009 by the team of Laboratoire D’art, Cabriolet Film Festival (CFF) is the first outdoors film festival of its kind in Lebanon. The festival has since become an annual event and takes place over the course of three consecutive nights on Gemayzeh Stairs in the heart of Beirut City.
Since its inauguration, the festival has prided itself on creating a unique forum of exchange and dialogue between the public and the filmmaking community through hosting an event that encourages individual talents, brings together artists and filmmakers, champions short films, improves networking between interest groups, and allows the public to interact with filmmakers. Year after year, CFF has demonstrated its commitment to celebrating short film as an independent form of art in a non-competitive public event by presenting local and international films in various guises from archival, to short fiction, to documentary, to animation and video art.
Furthermore, the festival has gradually evolved into an event that keeps up with emerging trends, supports causes, and addresses popular topics and issues through the adoption of a theme unique each year for screened short films. So far, short films from over 25 countries have been presented in our event. 2012 was a memorable year for CFF, it was added to the Ministry of Tourism List with other international festivals and was promoted in Cannes Film Festival.
The theme of CFF 2016 has been set as “Conflictâ€. A theme, which by definition refers to a struggle between opposing forces. Cabriolet Film Festival in its 8th edition will tackle the duality of external and internal conflicts. Situations from around the world and others within one’s self, these battles and ravages are driven by disputes on all scales: science, arts, faith, politics, gender, borders, theories, intellect, resources, hostility, security etc.
Relationships between people, beliefs and inner personal ideas and feelings are subject to active conflicts and disagreements that lead to rich and disparate interpretations about our world and the environments in which we evolve.
