Kamal Aljafari
A FIDAI FILM
Palestina, Germania, Qatar, Brasile, Francia, 2023, 78'
In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded Beirut. During this time, it raided the Palestinian Research Center and looted its entire archive, including a collection of still and moving images. A Fidai Film (fidai = singular of fedayeen) aims to create a counter-narrative to this loss, presenting a form of cinematic sabotage that seeks to reclaim and restore the looted memories of Palestinian history. Through a unique blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques, Aljafari “has documented not just the evidence of his stolen homeland, but also a new way of filming a whole new kind of cinema - the cinema of the negatives. He gets the same negatives and reverses their light and shadows, as it were. What the Israelis have highlighted, he darkens, and what they have shoved into the background, he brings to the foreground; and thus, where they show, he sabotages, and where they hide, he exposes. (Hamid Dabashi)”
Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker. He attended the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and now lives in Berlin, Germany. He taught filmmaking at The New School in New York and the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie, Berlin. He was a Film Study Centre Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. In 2021, Olhar de Cinema – Curitiba International Film Festival in Brazil devoted its Focus Section to his work. His UNDR premiered at IFFR 2024. A Fidai Film has premiered in Visions du Réel in 2024. Aljafari is preparing a feature film to be shot in Jaffa.
conceived and directed by: kamal aljafari
edited by: kamal aljafari, yannig willmann
sound: attila faravelli
Line producer & assistant editing: flavia mazzarino
original music: simon fisher turner
sound mixing: jochen jezussek
voice: darin dibsy, kamal aljafari
ALL SCREENINGS ARE FREE
