Nov. 2, 2024
SPECIAL EVENT: Three films by Rosalind Nashishibi + A Fidai Film by Kamal Aljafari.
An evening in collaboration with Claire Fontaine and Jun Kebab. Dedicated to the victims of the genocide perpetuated by the Israeli government. With food by Jun Kebab + Wine courtesy of Vito Planeta.
Studio Claire Fontaine 17:00 til late.
All proceeds from this screening will go towards Medicalaid Palestine e Il Lebanese Red Cross. Vinyl copies of the album AID for Gaza by Hardcore Unlimted Records (Torino) and a selection of other titles will also be availble.
Deep thanks to Rosalind Nashishibi, Kamal Aljafari Federico Chiari and Diego Marcon
Dahiet Al Bareed, District of the Post Office (2002, 7')
Hreash House (2004, 20')
Electrical Gaza (2015, 17’)
by Rosalind Nashishibi
British Palestinian artist Rosalind Nashishibi's three Palestinian films were made over the last twenty years and include Dahiet Al Bareed, District of the Post Office, Hreash House and Electrical Gaza. Dahiet Al Bareed, District of the Post Office documents a Gazan suburb built originally for the Palestinian Post Office but reality time a no-man’s land between Ramallah and East Jerusalem. A game of football is played and rubbish burns whilst the daily goings on of the barbershop – Sweet Love Saloon for Men plays out in front of the camera. The adhan, or call to prayer is heard amidst a landscape of decay and degradation. Hreash House filmed inside a Nazareth home, documents day in the life of one Palestinian family preparing and then eating a Ramadan feast. The family is expansive and lives collectively. Electrical Gaza was filmed in the months preceding the Israeli operation 'Protective Edge’ that bombarded the Gaza strip between July and August of 2014. Gaza is shown as a place from myth: isolated, suspended in time, difficult to access and electrically charged. An image of life in Gaza emerges counter to the mediated images of rubble and destruction, one in which we see a community managing to operate against unimaginable odds.
A Fidai film
by Kamal Aljafari (2024, 78')
Composed of archival fragments, A Fidai Film reconstructs the visual memory of Palestine, reclaiming images that were plundered from the Palestine Research Centre in Beirut in 1982. During Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the Israseli Defence Force looted the archive of the Palestinian Research Centre, taking thousands of documents with them back to Israel. These included both still and moving images, that formed an integral part of the visual memory of Palestine. The stolen materials were then used by Israel to create a narrative aimed at bolstering the Occupation. As openly referenced by the title (Fidai refers to the figure of the freedom fighter), A FIDAI FILM is an act of resistance that re-appropriates those images in an attempt to reanimate Palestine’s vanishing history. Aljafari broadens our perspective on the Occupation by bending time: material shot decades earlier grimly resembles the daily contemporary images broadcast from Gaza. Restoring the images to their original meaning, stripping away words and Aljafari reveals the intimidating propaganda work that goes hand in hand with military occupation.
Rosalind Nashashibi is a British-Palestinian filmmaker and painter. She studied painting at Sheffield Hallam University before completing a Master of Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art in 2000. She lives and works in London. Her work in moving image, using 16 mm film, explores subconscious and inner responses to moments and events, often addressing the politics surrounding communal relations and notions of an expanded family. In 2017, Nashashibi was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Her work has been featured in numberous exhibitions including 'Documenta 14' (2017), 'Sharjah 'Biennial 10' (2011), 'Manifesta 7' (2008) and she represented Scotland in the 2007 'Venice Biennale'. Nashishibi was the first woman to win the Beck’s Futures prize in 2003. Recent solo exhibitions include Secession, Vienna; The Art Institute of Chicago and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam.
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 have been 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, Paris 2024-2025. In May 2024, IndieLisboa dedicated a retrospective to his work. In 2022 he was guest of honor at Sicilia Queer filmfest, Palermo. His film A Fidai Film won the grand jury prize at Visions du Réel 2024, and in currently being show at festivals worldwide, including TIFF, London Film Festival and Viennale. He is currently developing a fiction film set to be shot in Jaffa.