The opening scene of Kamal Aljafari’s film Port of Memory (2009) starts "with a long
tracking shot of a grand, decaying house at twilight. The camera lingers
on the skin of this structure that bears traces of other times and
previous inhabitations. The footage feels like a memorial for a building
that may not live much longer: we see a floorboard of what was once a
balcony, recesses where there were stairs, and the remnants of plaster crenelations above cinder-blocked windows" as
She goes on her review of the film saying that the
film pairs the incremental expropriation of Palestinian property in
Jaffa with the foreclosure of Palestinian residents from the city’s
cinematic history. When interviewed, Aljafari referred to this
as the “cinematic occupation of Jaffa.” In another interview, he explains:
“the film is very much about place, being excluded from it, about being
there and not being there at the same time. I know these buildings will
vanish from reality, so at least I have them in my film. And [through]
cinema…with framing and by shooting something for a long time, you can
claim it.”
This is very much related
to reclamation of places and things as Aljafari says in an interview with him. He tells a story that happened to him a couple of years ago while he was
filming a short miniature in his father’s hometown Ramleh. He was filming
raw unfinished balconies when suddenly a young Israeli guy appeared and
stood just behind his back. The guy waited and waited until he became
impatient. He asked Aljafari: what are you filming? he said, the balconies. the Israeli guy said: “you see all these balconies, they are mine.”
Obviously, the balconies were much older than him, Aljafari says.
Aljafari describes his film Balconies as an experimental meditation focusing on the deteriorating and unfinished balconies of his home town Ramleh, inspired by Federico Garcia Lorca's Romance Sonambulo, "But now I am not I, nor is my house now my house..."
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