STRANGE TRUTH: Screening "Port of Memory" and Conversation with Filmmaker Kamal AljafariSTRANGE TRUTH: Screening "Port of Memory" and Conversation with Filmmaker Kamal Aljafarihttp://www.haverford.edu/calendar/details/123431KINSC Sharpless Auditorium2010-04-14T19:30:002010-04-14T22:00:00
April 14, 7:30PM
KINSC Sharpless Auditorium
Presented by the Strange Truth Documentary Film Series
Description
Organized by Visiting Filmmaker Vicky Funari
Kamal Aljafari is a filmmaker and visual artist who graduated from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany. His films include the award-winning The Roof, (2006), a quiet, personal testament to the history and daily oppression of Palestinians living in Israel and most recently Port of Memory (2009). He is the Benjamin White Whitney Scholar and Radcliffe-Harvard University Film Study Center Fellow for 2009-2010, and was a featured artist at the 2009 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in New York.
PORT OF MEMORY
In what is left of the city of Jaffa, a man about to lose his house contemplates his fate. Meanwhile two women remain tied to their homes. In a nearby cafe an old captain sits motionless the whole day through, while another man moves restlessly like a fish in an aquarium.
The emptying of Jaffa, a thriving urban and economic port city in pre-1948 Palestine, of its indigenous residents, is a story rarely told. Aljafari's film follows his family after they receive an order to evacuate their home in Ajami, Jaffa's once-wealthy sea-front neighborhood. Their lives and those of the other residents are thrown into disarray because they don't have the means to fight back.
Radically poetic, Port of Memory is a reflection on the absurdity of being at once absent and present, blending the mundane gestures of everyday life and collective memory. Traveling from the subjective to the objective, the film captures the essence of being Palestinian in Israel, as well as under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.
(2009, 63 mins, in Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles)
NB: Kamal Aljafari's films Visit Iraq and The Roof will screen at International House Thursday, April 15 at 7:00pm Ibrahim Theater @ International House, University of Pennsylvania 3701 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104
Sponsored by the John B. Hurford '60 Humanities Center, Students for Justice in Palestine, and International House Philadelphia.
Sponsored by a generous grant from The Leaves of Grass Foundation.
For More Info
Hurford Humanities Center
610-795-6518
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