Director:
Kamal Aljafari
Year:
2015
Length:
70'
Category:
Feature film
Language:
Arabic
Subtitles:
English
The Israeli and American features shot in the town of Jaffa from the 60s to the 90s are the basis for the history of a dream. All protagonists are removed from the original footage, leaving an empty setting formed by the town. Thus, the impossible is made possible from the “I” perspective, namely filming the past and compiling a picture album made of memories.
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 Recollection 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.
