KAMAL ALJAFARI

KAMAL ALJAFARI‘s work interweaves between fiction, non-fiction, and art.

His first film The Roof (2006), won best soundtrack at Fidmarseille, followed by Port of Memory (2009), which received the Prix Louis Marcorelles at Cinema du Reel Paris. In 2015 he made the film Recollection, in which he removed actors from the foreground of films shot in Jaffa, to narrate the fate of a vanished city and passersby caught in the backgrounds. The film was premiered at Locrano, and toured in many art venues and museums. This was followed by An Unusual Summer (2020), made with surveillance camera material filmed by his father, narrating poetry of daily life through one corner of the street in his native city. Premiered at Burning light, Visions du Reel, and hailed by many critics as one of the top films of 2020, the film played in many festivals, including Viennale, Rotterdam, and Seville, winning several awards. Currently he is editing A Fidai Film, a film about a crime committed against images.

He was a featured artist at the 2009 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in New York, and in 2009-2010 was the Benjamin White Whitney fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute and Film Study Center. He taught at The New School in New York, and at the German Film And Television Academy, Berlin. Showcases of his work took place at Lussas Film Festival in France and at the Cinémathèque québécoise Montreal. In 2021 he was a member of the international jury at Visions du Réel film festival as well as the Locarno film Festival in Switzerland.