British Week at the ABCs & Lebanese Week at Sofil

The British Embassy in Beirut is celebrating British week at the ABC malls. It’s a nice effort to bring something new to the scene and share some culture. They’ve gone all out with labeled wooden phonebooths scattered around the mall with stories inside them – the ones I saw were of The Beatles, William Turner, and English Cake. There’s also some vintage items like a sewing machine, a TV, a computer and a camera, a Twitter wall, Augmented Reality, and random events scheduled throughout the day. In my opinion, best part was the vintage car exhibit at ABC Ashrafieh located between Vero Moda and GS:

Vintage Jag.

Phantommmm.

Jag.

Aston Martin on the left. Yum.

Classic.

Other little things I snapped some photos of:

Clay Figures.

More Clay Figures.

Phonebooths.

Inside the booth.

Richard Branson!

Vintage Sewing Machine.

There is a Lebanese Film Festival going on this week at Metropolis theatre in Sofil Center. Films from the 60s and 70s are showing throughout the week. The opening was this Wednesday – the movie featured was “Beirut 0-11” with Sabah and Ihsan Sadek, who was present. In the movie, he looked a lot like Amr Diab, but he didn’t age as well as Mr. Habibi ya Nour el Ain. The film was actually entertaining in that I-watch-an-old-movie-and-laugh-at-the-silly-plot-and-horrible-special-effects way. If you enjoy vegetating on the couch watching TCM, this will be a fun night out. “Sabah saved the day with her Manolos” as my friend put it, as Sabah discretely leaves behind her pump disguised as a bomb on the bad guys’ yacht.

Entrance to each film is 5,000 LL or you can get a full pass for 40,000 LL but, be warned, only two films have English subtitles and the rest may be in Egyptian Arabic. Check out the program for the rest of the week here.

Beirut 0-11: The Opening Film.

I think the part that a lot of people ignored was the mini poster exhibition. There were about 16 posters hung up at the entrance to Metropolis – vintage posters from old Lebanese films. If you don’t want to stick around for a movie, then at least sneak a peek at the posters.