During the darkest days of this past summer, it seemed unlikely that the Beirut International Film Festival would take place at all this year. Given the extensive damage to the country’s infrastructure, and the logistical challenges of organizing such an event under even the best of circumstances, the easy choice would have been to postpone the festival until better days were at hand.

However, Colette Naufal, the director of the festival, was determined that it should go forward despite all obstacles. As she pointed out, it was more important than ever that the festival take place this year, as an affirmation of the resilience of the people of Lebanon, as well as an act of cultural resistance to war. It is imperative that the cultural landscape be rebuilt along with the physical landscape, and in this spirit it is a special privilege for us to sponsor and help produce this year’s 7th Beirut International Film Festival.

The festival received an important boost when Marco Muller, the director of the Venice Film Festival, courageously offered to come to Beirut as the head of an international delegation of film professionals. Having been instrumental in the creation of the Sarajevo film festival during the war in Yugoslavia, Marco knows well the vital role that culture plays during times of strife. On September 4, at a press conference in Venice, Marco, along with Massimo Cacciari (the mayor of Venice) and David Croffe (the president of the Venice Biennale) held a special press conference to express their solidarity with the Beirut film festival and announce that the festival would take place as planned.

In tandem with this, we launched Make Films Not War, a new initiative created to mobilize the international film community to promote non-violent alternatives to war. In Venice, we issued a statement calling for diplomacy and political engagement that was endorsed by prominent directors, actors, and other film professionals. We have also established a Conflict Zone Film Fund, which will provide support for film projects that engage talented and politically aware filmmakers from opposing sides of the world's diverse conflict situations. From Beirut, the MakeFilmsNotWar campaign will be taken to other cities around the world, to encourage dialogue and creative alternatives to war.

George Gund                                 Iara Lee

chairman/ sponsor                         director of Make Films Not War
                                                 www.MakeFilmsNotWar.org