Parallel event. Screening Port of Memory, by Kamal Aljafari at Beirut Art Center

About the event
The history of the town of Jaffa, a thriving port city now part of Tel Aviv, provides the background for Aljafari's film, centering on his mother›s family at risk of eviction if they cant find proof that the house they have lived in for decades belongs to them. Their predicament is rendered with Aljafari's usual subtlety, as well as deadpan humor and dark wit. This skeletal narrative provides the scaffolding for a portrait of life in what was once a bustling neighborhood that was nearly emptied by fighting during the establishment of the state of Israel, and then suffered decades of official neglect. In the meantime, Jaffa was often used as a location for action adventure movies featuring the likes of Chuck Norris. While these films used the city as a generically exotic location, they have now become, in a neat bit of irony, the source of documentary images of the city as it was.

Biographies

Kamal Aljafari (b. 1972) is a graduate of the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, where he received and the Friedrich-Vordemberge Visual Art Prize of the City of Cologne in 2004. His films include The Roof (2006), which won the Best International Award at the Images Festival in Toronto and Best soundtrack at Fidmarseille, and Port of Memory (2009), which received the Prix Louis Marcorelles at Cinema du Reel Paris. His short films include Visit Iraq (2003), Balconies (2007) and My Father’s Video (2009).
Elias Khoury (b. 1948) is a Lebanese novelist, playwright, critic and a prominent public intellectual. He has published ten novels, which have been translated into several foreign languages, as well as several works of literary criticism. He has also written three plays. Between 1993 and 2009 he served as editor of Al-Mulhaq, the weekly cultural supplement of the Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Nahar.

Parallel event
Screening Port of Memory
By Kamal Aljafari

Followed by a Conversation between Kamal Aljafari and Elias Khoury
Wednesday 22 July 2015, 7pm

www.beirutartcenter.org