UNDR

Kamal Aljafari’s latest film sees him once again utilising archival footage and evocative sound design to skilfully craft new narratives and a compelling work of counter-cinema. Aljafari’s continued engagement with archive material remains urgent and timely in the face of the destruction of and denial of access to Palestinian archives and heritage. Circling from a distance, a soaring camera gazes down on significant historical sites – Damascus Gate, al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and the ancient fortresses Herodium and Masada. These man-made structures are juxtaposed with organic formations in the land, terrains then shattered through a choreography of explosions. A powerful work of re-appropriation and reclamation, UNDR gives indirect expression to the loss and destruction of land, and to those who have been dispossessed and displaced. (Alice Miller)

Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker. He attended the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and now lives in Berlin, Germany. He has taught filmmaking at The New School in New York and the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie, Berlin. He was also a Film Study Center Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. In 2021, Olhar de Cinema – Curitiba International Film Festival in Brazil devoted its Focus Section to his work. Paradiso, XXXI, 108, premiered at Corti d’Autore, in Locarno Film Festival 2022. He is currently completing A Fidai Film and preparing a fiction film to be shot in Jaffa.

A Fidai Film (2023), Paradiso, XXXI, 108 (2022), An Unusual Summer (2020), It’s a Long Way from Amphioxus (2019), Recollection (2015), Port of memory (2010), The roof (2006), Balconies (2007), Visit Iraq (2003)