A Fidai Film
Kamal Aljafari / PS, DEUZE, QA, BR, FR, 2024 / 78 min.
Poignant found footage film on the looting of archives during the civil war in Lebanon, in 1982. What can we see, feel and perhaps comprehend from archival materials? It is a dialogue that can only begin with putting a mirror in front of archives.
Kamal Aljafari (1972) is a Palestinian filmmaker renowned for his distinctive approach to cinema. He considers all his works as an archive: “Images are not something that you make, but that you find”. His newest work A Fidai Film is a found footage film. In the summer of 1982 the Israeli army invaded Beirut. During this time it raided the Palestinian Research Center and looted its entire archive. The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images.
Taking this as a premise, A Fidai Film 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. It’s a poignant exploration of identity, memory, and resistance, told through a unique blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques.
Cinema of the dispossessed
It is not only a project about the present past that needs to be recognized, but also about the future that is still possible to define. Repurposed moving images, names and texts are digitally defaced. Red scribbles blot out parts of the footage. Figures are cut out, or replaced with random material re-appropriated from backgrounds. Kamal Aljafari calls his counter-archive “the camera of the dispossessed”.
This is part of
Details
Director
Kamal Aljafari
Production year
2024
Country
PS, DEUZE, QA, BR, FR
Original title
A Fidai Film
Length
78 min.
Language
Arabic, Hebrew (modern), English
Subtitles
NONE
Format
DCP
Part of
Songs and Scenes from Palestine
In Songs and Scenes from Palestine, we get to view the history and cultural identity of the Palestinian people through their own lens. In this programme, Palestinian artists and filmmakers allow us to share in their culture and their stories.
Why in Eye
“Our relationship with history is a relationship with images already imprinted in our minds, images at which we keep staring while the truth lies elsewhere, in a remote place that no one has yet discovered.” (W.G. Sebald in his book Austerlitz, 2001)
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