Khaberni - Syrian radio artist and director Mazen Lotfi passed away at dawn on Friday at the age of 85, after a career spanning more than half a century in radio and television drama, during which he left thousands of hours of work that shaped part of the memory of listeners in Syria and the Arab world.
The Syrian Artists' Syndicate announced his death on its official Facebook page, mourning "the esteemed artist Mazen Lotfi" and offering condolences to his family, colleagues, and fans.
16,000 Hours in the Radio Archive
According to the Syrian News Agency, Mazen Lotfi is one of the icons of radio drama in the country, with the radio archive holding about 16,000 dramatic hours of his work, a figure described as record-breaking in the history of Arab radio directing.
Lotfi - born in Damascus in 1941 - began his career from the theater stage, where he participated in minor roles in private folk theater shows, before joining the radio's drama department in 1972. After training courses in Syria and abroad, he moved into radio directing, making his own mark in this field.
He directed and prepared dozens of radio works, participated in more than 50 dramatic works, and won multiple Arab awards, including the Gold Award at the Tunis Festival for his work "Spikes of Literature", and the Golden Creativity Awards at the Cairo Festival for Arab Media for works such as "Rain Junction", "Amazing Phenomena", and "A Voice in Memory".
A Voice in Memory.. A Director Honors His Colleagues
Mazen Lotfi joined the Artists' Syndicate in 1973, and throughout his career, he had close relationships with a number of icons of Syrian and Arabic art. Testimonies from the artistic community indicate that he was keen on documenting the experiences of pioneers, not only through collaboration with them but also through special works he dedicated to narrating their biographies.
Among these works was a radio series that chronicled the life and artistic journey of the artist Abdel Latif Fathi through his own voice, along with the program "A Voice in Memory" created and directed by Lotfi, which he dedicated to revisiting the careers of deceased artists, describing it as a "renewed tribute to names that should not fade from public consciousness."
In this sense, Lotfi was one of those who worked quietly behind the microphone and camera, but at the same time, he sought to keep the voice of the pioneers present in the minds of the new generations.