Wednesday 25 December
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Film still from A Fidai Film, dir. Kamal Aljafari, 2024.
Kamal Aljafari, courtesy of the artist
Fan Wu, courtesy of the artist
Screening
21 September, 4:30 pm
The Screening Room, 120 Princess St, Kingston, ON
This event is free and open to all. Register as space is limited.
Open Secret: The Third Edition continues as a series composed of screenings, conversations, and workshops kicking off this autumn season with Kamal Aljafari’s A Fidai Film (2024), with opening remarks by Dr Nasrin Himada, Associate Curator of Academic Outreach and Community Engagement; and Fan Wu, Queen’s doctoral candidate in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies.
A Fidai Film
Palestine, Germany, Qatar, Brasil, France · 2024 · DCP 2K · Color/B&W · 78′ · o.v. Arabic, English, Hebrew · Sub Eng
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 The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images.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‘ aims to create a counter-narrative to this loss, presenting a form of cinematic sabotage that seeks to reclaim and restore the looted memories of Palestinian history. It’s a poignant exploration of identity, memory, and resistance, told through a unique blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques.
Trailer:
A Fidai Film
Website
kamalaljafari.art
kamalaljafari.productions
Open Secret takes its departure from Fred Moten’s words that “poetry investigates new ways for people to get together and do stuff in the open, in secret.” Similarly, cinema’s capacity to condition spaces for gathering, and the double maneuver of opacity and transparency inherent in its making sets the precedent for this sort of investigation embedded in collaboration. This year we embark on a rare opportunity to think through relational entanglements as aesthetic practice inspired by our transdisciplinary network of those working to expand the meaning of diaspora and deepen affinities after October 7, 2023. We now prototype an open curriculum that accesses urgent pedagogical, curatorial and artistic imperatives through the lens of the moving image, new media, film, and time-based work.
Biography
Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker. Aljafari has taught filmmaking at The New School in New York and the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie in Berlin. His contributions to the field were recognised with fellowships at the Film Study Center – Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University and most recently at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Columbia University 2024-2025. In May 2024, IndieLisboa will highlight his contributions to cinema by dedicating its retrospective Section to his work. Additionally, his installation “The Camera of the Dispossessed” was showcased at the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023). His film ‘A Fidai Film’ won the grand jury prize at Visions du Réel 2024. He is currently developing a fiction film set to be shot in Jaffa.
Fan Wu is a poet, performer, and community facilitator. His current work is informed by practices of originary emptiness in Daoist traditions. He is a founding member of the Toronto Experimental Translation Collective and collaborates on poetry/music projects with Prince Nifty, Vibrant Matter, and Thom Gill. He has written extensively on the oeuvre of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming Liang and how it expresses the wet & wounded condition of modern desire.
