SYNOPSIS
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 The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images.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.
REVIEW
A Fidai Film showcases the style of Palestinian visual artist Kamal Aljafari, who explores the political possibilities of archival documentary. In the summer of 1982, Israeli forces invaded Beirut and looted the archives of the Palestine Research Center. These archives contained numerous documents about Palestine, including a large collection of photographs and films. The images were subsequently renamed and reindexed according to the vision of their new custodian, the Israeli Ministry of Defense. To confront these acts of looting and appropriation, Aljafaro advocates for an alternative narrative. Blending documentary and experimental cinema techniques, A Fidai Film raises awareness of identity, memory, and the possibility of resistance. Inspired by poetic montage, Aljafari's work offers a fresh perspective on images typically seen only in film or television, emphasizing the archive's status and mode of existence as a political tool. By deleting, adding, and overlaying the words of the occupier, Aljafari exposes the ideology of empire and the act of appropriation. Red graffiti erases parts of the video, while figures are cut out or replaced with other material. Aljafari calls this counter-archive "the camera of the dispossessed," showcasing the subversive struggle of resistance through the modification, reassembling, and editing of overlapping texts, sounds, and images. This innovative work reveals the truth of the here and now, alluding to the invisible presence of occupying forces that seek to erase people from history and memory.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
This is not a film about the past, but about the future that is still possible to define. I am sabotaging the colonial gaze. It is a work that can only begin with putting a mirror in front of colonial archives. 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?
This counter-archive is what I call “the camera of the dispossessed.”
CONTACT
Kamal Aljafari Productions
kamalaljafari.productions@gmail.com
