FILMS BY KAMAL ALJAFARI
1Shanthiroad Studio
FILMS BY KAMAL ALJAFARI
SATURDAY JUNE 1 - SUNDAY JUNE 2
At 1Shanthiroad studio/gallery
Kamal Aljafari - Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker. Aljafari has taught filmmaking at The New School in New York and the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie in Berlin. His contributions to the field were recognised with fellowships at the Film Study Center - Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University and most recently at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Columbia University 2024-2025. In May 2024, IndieLisboa will highlight his contributions to cinema by dedicating its retrospective Section to his work. Additionally, his installation “The Camera of the Dispossessed” was showcased at the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023). His film ‘A Fidai Film’ won the grand jury prize at Visions du Réel 2024. He is currently developing a fiction film set to be shot in Jaffa.
Shai Heredia - Shai Heredia is a filmmaker, curator, and founding director of Experimenta, the moving image art biennial of India. She has co-directed I Am Micro (2012) and An Old Dog’s Diary (2015), which have exhibited at prestigious film festivals and art venues internationally. Both films have won awards, including a National Film Award and a BFI London Film Festival award. Heredia programmed the 65th Robert Flaherty Seminar and is currently the co-curator of Berlinale Forum Expanded. Her latest book “One Film at a Time” has been published by Arsenal Institut for Film and Video Art. She also teaches in the Graduate Program in Contemporary Art Practice at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore.
Ekta Mittal - Ekta co-founded Maraa, a media and arts collective in Bangalore in 2008. She works there as a practitioner, researcher, curator and facilitator around issues of gender, labour & caste in rural and urban contexts. She has been making films around labour, migration and cities since 2009 (www.tinsheets.in). Her films focus on the inner worlds of workers in the context of migration. She has also co-founded a theatre group called Freeda with women in Madhya Pradesh who experienced extreme forms of systemic violence, to tell their stories on their own terms. Her next film is about the death, decay and disappearance of a civilisation in a mining town in Chhattisgarh.
Amshu Chukki - Amshu is a Bengaluru-based multi-disciplinary artist. His practice is site-informed and is an ongoing exploration of new ways of articulating ideas of landscape and cities that dwell on the visible and not-so-visible interconnections between life, cinema, urbanity, infrastructure, politics, and fiction. He had his recent solo show ‘Different Danny And Other Stories’ at Chatterjee & Lal in Mumbai in 2022. He has participated in a number of group exhibitions and film festivals including - St.Moritz Art Film Festval in 2023, From Cinema, AI(R)C Artists in Revolution Collective, L.A, U.S.A in 2021, Chennai Photo Biennale, curated by Pushpamala. N in 2018. Chukki has also been the recipient of the Forbes 30 under 30 for Visual Arts in 2016, and the INLAKS Fine Arts Award in 2014.
Day 1 - Saturday, 1st June
05:50 pm - 06:00 pm, introductory note by Amshu Chukki
06:00 pm - 07:00 pm, The Roof
YEAR 2006
RUNTIME 61’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany
LANGUAGE Arabic; Hebrew; English
TECHS Color
This deceptively quiet film presents a portrait of Aljafari’s family in Ramleh and Jaffa that hovers between documentary and cinematic memoir, guided by a nimble camera moving calmly but ceaselessly around the rooms of homes inhabited, damaged and ruined.
The title refers to the roof missing from the house where Aljafari’s family resettled in 1948, a home unfinished, an incomplete construction project. The use of stillness and off-screen space creates a sense of suspension, of time spent waiting, of aftermath, of lives lived elsewhere.
Aljafari’s striking use of his “cast,” his family, reveals the influence of Bresson’s use of nonprofessional actors as models whose performances emanate from their presence, not from acting.
07:00 pm - 07:45 pm, Tea break, conversation between respondent Shai Heredia and Amshu Chukki.
07:45 pm - 08:55 pm, Recollection
YEAR 2015
RUNTIME 70’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany; Lebanon
LANGUAGE Arabic; English
TECHS Color, Black and White
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.
08:55 pm conversation between respondent Shai Heredia and Amshu Chukki followed by Audience interaction.
Day 2 - Sunday, 2nd June
05:50 pm - 06:00 pm, introductory note by Amshu Chukki
06:00 pm - 06:18 pm, PARADISO XXI, 108
YEAR 2022
RUNTIME 18’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany
LANGUAGE Hebrew
TECHS Color
“Nothing can be heard anymore; the roar of our plane absorbs every other sound. We are heading straight to the world’s biggest display of soundproof fireworks, and soon we will drop our bombs”.
06:18 pm - 06:30 pm, Tea break, conversation between respondent Ekta Mitta and Amshu Chukki.
06:30 pm - 07:48 pm, A Fidai Film
YEAR 2024
RUNTIME 78’
COUNTRIES Palestine; Germany; Qatar, Brasil; France
LANGUAGE Arabic, English, Hebrew
TECHS Color, Black and White
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.
07:48 pm conversation between respondent Ekta Mitta and Amshu Chukki followed by Audience interaction.
