Event
Kamal Aljafari is a filmmaker and visual artist who graduated from the Kunsthochschule für Medien (Academy of Media Arts) in Cologne, Germany. His films include the short Visit Iraq (2003) and the award-winning The Roof (2006), a quiet, personal testament to the history and daily oppression of Palestinians living in Israel. The Roof won the Best International on Screen (Video) Award at the Images Festival in Toronto and the award for best soundtrack at the FID Marseille documentary festival in France. All Aljaafari’s films screened at the 2009 Flaherty Seminar were he was a featured artist.
Visit Iraq (Kamal Aljafari, Germany, 2003, 26 min)
A humorous look at the rumors surrounding an Iraqi Airways agency in Geneva, which has remained mysteriously, abandoned since 1990.
The Roof (Kamal Aljafari, Palestine 2006, 61 min)
“An eloquent and understated exploration of physical and psychic place in the context of Palestinian filmmaker Aljafari’s family history. Returning to his parents’ and grandmother’s homes in Ramla and Jaffa, now part of Israel, Aljafari uses elegant cinematography, unhurried rhythms, and fragmented narrative to convey how space, time, and history have been molded by politics and Israeli institutionalized neglect. The roof of the title is an absent one, on the unfinished house where his family has lived since their resettlement in 1948, and it functions as a place of waiting marked by constant deferral.” –Irina Leimbacher
This program is made possible thanks to the generous support of International House Philadelphia, Haverford College, and the Cinema Studies Program & the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania.