LOADING
Directed by Kamal Aljafari | 78 minutes | 15+ | Special Presentation |
5:15pm Saturday, 31 May | SV HQ Inside | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes
RECLAIM THE CORRUPTED/COLONISED IMAGE
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 The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images. Director Kamal Aljafari reappropriated this footage, sometimes through the righteous piracy of Israeli academics' guarded materials, to reclaim and restore the looted memories of Palestinian history.
A Fidai Film is a poignant exploration of identity, memory, and resistance, told through a unique blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques. Aljafari finds life in the background of colonisers' footage, and he colours the guns, the oppressor's faces, and tears in the film with bright red, highlighting both the violence done to a people and their will to keep fighting. No straightforward answers but lots of space to consider them.
SIMILAR: Activist documentaries like No Other Land (2024) and The Act of Killing (2012) or found footage documentaries like Nazarbazi (2022) + Mast-del (2023) and the work of Adam Curtis.
"The radical form of the documentary emulates the spirit of its title, as the Arabic translation of Fidai means 'the one who dedicates his life to a cause.' " - David Cuevas, POV Magazine
"... Playful and stirring film that questions our naive belief in the veracity of the image while exposing the hazardous role of narration: a simultaneous act of disruption and self-affirmation against time, against violent depletion, against fate." - Joseph Fahim, Middle East Eye
Co-Presented with Dogmilk Films
Country: Palestine
Year: 2024
Language: Arabic, English, Hebrew