A Fidai Film
Competition                   

A Fidai Film

Kamal Aljafari

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 The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images.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.

 

«This is not a film about the past, but about the future that is still possible to define. It is a work that can only begin with putting a mirror in front of colonial archives. I am sabotaging the colonial gaze. What can we see, feel and perhaps comprehend from archival materials found in Israeli institutions, which tirelessly documented everything possible in this country turned into broken pieces year after year? In every field, the issue for us, Palestinians, is one of re-appropriation, of land as well as of images. This is what I did in A Fidai Film, and this counter-archive that resulted is what I call “the camera of the dispossessed”, as an attempt to resist this ban on self-representation.»

— Kamal Aljafari

Information

Country

Palestine, Germany, Qatar, Brazil, France

Year

2024

Length

78'

Category

experimental

Origin of archival materials

Document Archives for the Narrations from: Report: The 8th Mobile Information Team Field Trip (Jan 15 - Feb 4, 1963.) Report: The 12th Mobile Information Team Field Trip (Mar 26 – Apr 12, 1963) Report: The 14th Mobile Information Team Field Trip (Nov 8 - 28, 1963) Report: The 16th Mobile Information Team Field Trip (Jan 15 - 30, 1964) Report: The 17th Mobile Information Team Field Trip (Apr 19 - May 2, 1964) Archive Film Footages from: The Community Development Worker (1963), a short documentary made by The United States Information Service (USIS) Bangkok for screening in rural areas for propaganda purpose. Film excerpt provided by Film Archive Thailand. Sherlock Jr. (1924), a silent film directed by Buster Keaton, Public Domain.

Editing

Kamal Aljafari, Yannig Willmann

Production

Kamal Aljafari, Flavia Mazzarino

Music

Simon Fisher Turner

Director’s biography

Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari studied at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln and currently lives in Berlin. He has taught filmmaking at The New School (New York) and the DFFB (Berlin). In 2024, A Fidai Film won the Grand Jury Prize Burning Lights Competition at Visions du Réel.