Film projection — A Fidai Film
16/10/2025
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The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images.
Taking this as a premise, A Fidai Film explores the visual memory of this looting and appropriates images now in the hands of Israeli archives.
For the second year, Recontemporary is pleased to participate in CHE LA MIA VOCE SIA UN SEME (LET MY VOICE BE A SEED), an independent film festival curated by Alessandro Maccarrone. Admission to the event is free, and donations will go to support the ODV Progetto rifqa.
Thursday 16 October, 8pm at Rec
«Aljafari has also documented not just the evidence of his stolen homeland, but also a new way of filming a whole new kind of cinema – the cinema of the negatives. He gets the same negatives and reverses their light and shadows, as it were. What the Israelis have highlighted, he darkens, and what they have shoved into the background, he brings to the foreground; and thus, where they show, he sabotages, and where they hide, he exposes» (Hamid Dabashi).
Logline
Investigating the looting of Palestinian films which took place in Beirut in 1982, the film uses this event as a premise in order to make visible materials hidden in Israeli archives, and proposes a counter-narrative of a continuous history of appropriation.
Director’s note
This is not a film about the past, but about the future that is still possible to define. I am sabotaging the colonial gaze. It is a work that can only begin with putting a mirror in front of colonial archives. What can we see, feel and perhaps comprehend from archival materials found in Israeli institutions, which tirelessly documented everything possible in this country turned into broken pieces year after year?
This counter-archive is what I call “the camera of the dispossessed”.
Technical infos
Palestine, Germany, Qatar, Brasil, France · 2023 · DCP 2K · Color/B&W · 78′ · o.v. Arabic, English, Hebrew · Sub Eng
Credits
Conceived and Directed by: Kamal Aljafari
Edited by: Kamal Aljafari, Yannig Willmann
Sound: Attila Faravelli
Line Producer & Assistant Editing: Flavia Mazzarino
Original Music: Simon Fisher Turner
Sound Mixing: Jochen Jezussek
Voice: Darin Dibsy, Kamal Aljafari
2024 © kamal aljafari productions
Awards︎︎︎:
Cinematic Vision Award (Camden International Film Festival)
︎︎︎Jury Prize in the Burning Lights Competition (Visions du Réel)
︎︎︎GNCR/CINÉ+ Distribution Support Prize / Renaud Victor Prize (FID Marseille)
︎︎︎Premio del Sindacato Nazionale Critici Cinematografici Italiani (SNCCI) / Menzione d’onore Giuria Giovani (Pesaro Film Festival)
︎︎︎International Feature Award (DokuFest)
︎︎︎Mirage Sound Design Award (MIRAGE Film Festival)
︎︎︎Best International Film (Lima Alterna Festival Internacional de Cine)
︎︎︎Young Jury Special Mention (Archivio Aperto)
︎︎︎Jury Special Mention (Transmutación Cine Contemporaneo)
︎︎︎Best Film (Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote)
︎︎Tanit d’Or (Carthage Film festival)
︎︎︎Grand Prize (Festival en Ville !)
Kamal Aljafari
Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist. His films have screened at major festivals and museums, including Locarno, London, Viennale, and the 35th Bienal de São Paulo. He has received prestigious awards from FIDMarseille, Pesaro, and Visions du Réel. In 2024, IndieLisboa hosted a full retrospective of his work. Aljafari has taught at The New School and DFFB in Berlin and was a Film Study Center fellow at Harvard. Currently a fellow at Columbia University's Institute for Ideas and Imagination, he is developing “Beirut 1931,” a fiction film to be shot in Jaffa.
Che la mia voce sia un seme
Looking at the sky, I dream of a fabric kite. That white kite with its long tail is a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, a soul, a voice. The voice allows us to be forever present in every beating heart. Looking at the earth, I dream of a seed—small, often invisible, yet it holds the essence of life. That seed will one day heal a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, a soul. And so, it flies, it sows, where every dream touches the sky, and every soul finds peace.
CHE LA MIA VOCE SIA UN SEME (Let my voice be a seed) is an independent film series dedicated to Palestine, held across various locations in Turin from October 2024 to February 2025.
The title of the series, CHE LA MIA VOCE SIA UN SEME (Let my voice be a seed), is a reimagined quote drawn from the final lines of the poem If I Should Die by Refaat Alareer (read in the first comment).
Refaat was killed on the night of December 6-7, 2023, along with seven other members of his family, during an Israeli raid that struck his home.
In his poem, Refaat writes, "Let my end be a story." In the narratives of the films presented, the voices of the Palestinian people do not foresee an end but rather a seed capable of sprouting, spreading its roots to cleanse the evil poisoning the land.