Bari, “Outside Bif&st – The city dresses up in cinema”. The program of events for the Fuori Festival was presented.

The presentation of "Outside Bif&st – The City dresses up in cinema“, the program of initiatives promoted by various commercial and cultural activities throughout the city during the 16th edition of the Bif&st-Bari International Film&Tv Festival (23-2024 March XNUMX). The initiative, promoted and coordinated by the Municipality of Bari through a call addressed to commercial establishments and cultural entities, was also designed this year to animate the places of the city before and after film screenings, with large and small events dedicated to seventh art.

To illustrate the program of this new edition of the Fuori Festival - which involves more 50 businesses e 20 cultural operators, with 100 appointments between installations, exhibitions, screenings, events, aperitifs and themed workshops - the mayor Antonio Decaro and the councilor for Economic Development, Carla Palone, and for Cultures, Ines Pierucci, in the presence of the organizational director of the Bif&st Angelo Ceglie and the general director of Apulia Film Commission Antonio Parente.

"Thanks to all those who worked to organize the Fuori Bif&st once again, which allows the city to feel fully an active part of a long-awaited event - declared the mayor Antonio DeCaro -. We have always said that Bif&st is a festival of spectators who get moving, move between the different theaters and cinemas to attend the screenings, the masterclasses, the workshops, and for a few years, in collaboration with the organisers, we have thought of also open it to other activities in the city so that the festival became a collective event. This great visibility linked to cinema is an extraordinary commercial for encourage more and more people to get to know Bari up close, an opportunity that over the years has allowed us to grow from many points of view. The initiatives we are presenting are also many for this new edition: after an experimental start three years ago, this experience has grown year after year in terms of participation and offer in the area. The Bif&st is Bari, Bari is the Bif&st, good luck to all of us for this new edition of the festival".

“Bari participates in the Bif&st with this important event – ​​he underlined Carla Palone -. The Fuori Bif&st was born three years ago with an appeal aimed at traders and cultural activities interested in beautifying the city through the organization of events and appointments dedicated to cinema. This result was also possible thanks to the d_Bari program which supports neighborhood shops through a mutual pact between traders and the city. Today we present a program full of events conceived and organized independently by commercial and cultural activities, which I thank for having decided to invest with the aim of animating our city during the festival. I hope that the media will help us spread the program of this initiative as much as possible, which sees traders and the city's cultural realities as protagonists".

"I thank the Bif&st and the Apulia Film Commission who, together with us, shared the idea that a large-scale festival, like that of Bari, should be accompanied by an eye towards the territory in order to create an effective synergy with the city and its its actors, in this case the productive activities and cultural places, as well as the city's cinemas – he continued Ines Pierucci -. Because there is no economy without culture and there is no culture without economy and this festival, for 15 years now, enhances the professionalism that revolves around culture and which these days is engaged in all the places touched by the festival. It's nice that the Fuori Bif&st program is associated with that of the festival, with a reverse interface in the official Bif&st publication as proof of the great choral work from below. Bookshops, cinemas and galleries will host exhibitions and events dedicated to cinema in all neighborhoods of the city, which are added to the programming underway these days in public cultural spaces. Not all citizens are able to participate in the screenings and meetings of the Bif&st but they will certainly be able to enjoy moments of celebration thanks to the over one hundred initiatives planned with the Fuori Bif&st".

"For us at Bif&st, film festivals are not alien spaceships that fall into the city from Mars but are cultural events that are inevitably inserted into the cultural and economic fabric of the city, building elements of connection between different entities - he commented Angelo Ceglie -. Over these 15 years the festival has given a lot to the city and I believe that now the festival, with Fuori Bif&st, is receiving a lot from the city. For this I thank the Municipality of Bari who strongly wanted this outside of the festival, something that often doesn't happen in other cities. The Fuori Bif&st serves the city but also our guests who are welcomed in the best possible way, thus being able to appreciate the city from many points of view. This dressing up of the city, even in places not directly involved in the festival, can only be good for everyone".