This focus block is dedicated to Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari, whose work explores the political meaning of film archives. His latest production, A Fidai Film (2024), is a bold act of appropriation: using footage seized by the Israeli army in Beirut in 1982, Aljafari reconstructs an alternative visual history of Palestine.
Complementing Aljafari’s work, this block includes two films in dialogue with his approach. In Man Number 4 (Miranda Pennell, 2024), a viral image of captured Gazans becomes the subject of forensic scrutiny and ethical confrontation. Capricorn Sunset [a constellation] (Johannes Binotto, 2024) offers a meta-reflection on the emergence of meaning through constellations of fragments, reminding us that interpretation itself can be a political act.
Together, these films demonstrate the essay film’s power to question dominant narratives and create space for counter-images rooted in memory and resistance.