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 The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images.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.
«This is not a film about the past, but about the future that is still possible to define. It is a work that can only begin with putting a mirror in front of colonial archives. I am sabotaging the colonial gaze. 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? In every field, the issue for us, Palestinians, is one of re-appropriation, of land as well as of images. This is what I did in A Fidai Film, and this counter-archive that resulted is what I call “the camera of the dispossessed”, as an attempt to resist this ban on self-representation.»
— Kamal Aljafari
