São Paulo – The 6th South American Festival of Arab Culture will run from March 18th to 31st in 27 cities across Brazil in abroad. The event is organized by the Library and Research Center of South American-Arab Countries (Bibliaspa) and the entire program is free of charge.
The event will span capitals such as São Paulo, São Luís, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Brasília, Curitiba, Florianópolis and Fortaleza, and municipalities like Diadema, Santos, Campinas, Santo André, Franco da Rocha and São Bernardo do Campo, all in the state of São Paulo, plus Foz do Iguaçu (in Paraná) and Olinda (Permanbuco). Activities will also take place in Buenos Aires (Argentina), Tunis (Tunisia) and Beirut (Lebanon).
“The event is very comprehensive in its character, spatially speaking (number of cities). This is a result of the consolidation of the festival, which will feature 200-plus actions this year,” said Bibliaspa director Paulo Daniel Farah. In 2014, the festival covered 17 different cities.
Activities include over 15 art exhibits, lectures, debates, colloquiums, storytelling, roundtables, mediated reading actions, a film festival, workshops, publications and interventions.
As a festival highlight, Farah names the lectures on archaeological sites, prompted by the recent wrecking of historical art pieces by members of the Middle Eastern extremist group the Islamic State.
According to the Bibliaspa director, the lecture What happened at archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq over the past few years “explains the importance of said sites and the need to turn around this process [of destruction]”. For its part, the lecture on How to protect archaeological sites during wars will discuss “what can be done to prevent the catastrophe from being even worse.”
Main attractions of the festival include three exhibitions on the United Arab Emirates: The Coastal House of the United Arab Emirates, Life of the Desert Peoples and The Emirati Culture and Identity. The three shows will be held simultaneously at São Paulo’s Museum of Immigration from March 12th to 26th.
“The exhibitions portray the cultural traits of the UAE, such as the social culture of the shore, which boasts vast nautical knowledge, and of the desert. It also displays the relevance of the pearl, particularly in the past, to the local economy,” said Farah, noting that pictures by Gulf-based artists will be on show. Some of these artworks, as well as photographs and objects, will also be exhibited at the Santos Museum and at the Bibliaspa headquarters, in São Paulo.
The exhibitions are being held through a partnership between Bibliaspa, the Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority and the UAE consulate in São Paulo.
Workshops
The festival will feature a series of workshops on watercolor painting, cuisine and calligraphy. The film exhibit will take place in over 20 venues. Other exhibitions will feature works by artists from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Tunisia.
“The festival helps show that the absolute majority of Arabs value culture and education that doesn’t add up to what has been displayed in situations such as the destruction of heritage sites,” Farah remarked on the event’s relevance.
“It also shows that there’s an affinity between Arabs and South Americans, that there isn’t any distance or dissimilarity between these cultures. The festival displays commonalities between South America and Arab countries, and strengthens their cultural ties,” he said.
A Brazilian and Arab music concert will be held in Tunis, featuring a musician from Brazil and several Tunisian ones. In Beirut, a lecture and debate will focus on cooperation between Arab and South American countries.
Languages
Farah stressed the importance of the Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish languages for the festival and the integration of peoples from Arab and South American countries. The program will feature eight different lectures and experimental classes on these languages.
The director remarked that Bibliaspa has offered Arabic lessons for ten years now, and Portuguese classes to refugees since two years back. Now, the organization is opening new classes due to growing demand for the Portuguese course.
“The demand is soaring because more and more refugees are coming in each year. The influx is ever bigger, and all the more so in São Paulo,” he said. Besides administering free lessons to refugees, Bibliaspa assists with placing them on the labor market and offering activities for the children. The organization supplies the students with learning materials and food.
According to Farah, the majority of Arab refugees who seek out the lessons is from Syria, Iraq and Palestine, but Bibliaspa also teaches people from Nigeria, Congo, Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Haiti, Bolivia, and Peru.
Bibliaspa has recently begun offering Spanish classes as well; registration is open and the course starts on March 28th. “We believe it’s important to promote all of the languages spoken throughout South America and the Arab world,” Farah explained. The Spanish lessons are not free of charge.
6th South American Festival of Arab Culture (Saca)
March 18th to 31st in 27 cities in Brazil and abroad
The full program is available at http://migre.me/oYOhn (in Portuguese)
For additional information on the festival and the Bibliaspa language courses please call (+55 11) 99609-3188.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
