Director:
Kamal Aljafari
Year:
2024
Length:
78'
Category:
Feature film
Language:
Arabic, English, Hebrew
Subtitles:
English
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 The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images.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 explores the visual memory of this looting and appropriates images now in the hands of Israeli archives.
In line with this year’s thematic focus on Virtual Remains, the festival is happy to present Kamal Aljafari as our 2025 filmmaker in focus. The Filmmaker in Focus series brings together four works from Kamal’s oeuvre for a closer look, and in conversation with other archive-based film practices. Films include: A Fidai Film (2024); UNDR (2024); Paradiso XXI, 108 (2022); and Recollection (2015).
This screening of A Fidai Film is introduced with a short talk from film scholar Jamil Fiorino-Habib, who offers some reflections on Aljafari’s body of works in the context of virtuality and the archive.
Biography:
Jamil Fiorino-Habib (he/they) is a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen, researching the preservation and activation of film archival material in archives and festivals across the Southeastern Mediterranean. Focusing on documentary, experimental, and expanded cinema, their work weaves together archival studies, oceanic thought, and decolonial theory to examine the necropolitics of film heritage in the Global South—particularly in regions shaped by political violence and ruination. Alongside their academic research, Jamil is active as a moderator and cultural worker with grassroots collectives and institutions in the Netherlands, including EYE Filmmuseum, Spui25, and Het Nieuwe Instituut.
