Nationality: Palestinian
Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist. His work is largely affiliated with the world of documentary, although he employs a variety of different procedures and formats that position the visual arts in dialogue with the essay film and experimental cinema. One of the hallmarks of his process lies in the manipulation of images in an attempt to extrapolate their figurative nature, as in his treatment of domestic surveillance footage. Aljafari received an MFA from Academy of Media Arts Cologne (2003). His films have screened at festivals and museums worldwide, including Fondazione Prada, Sharjah Film Platform, Locarno Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, Nuova Orfeo, Curtas Vila do Conde, London Film Festival, Toronto Palestine Film Festival, Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, EXiS, Viennale, Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, and the 35th Bienal de São Paulo. He is the recipient of major awards from FIDMarseille, Pesaro Film Festival, and Visions du Réel, among others. A full retrospective of his work to date was held at IndieLisboa in 2024. Writing about his films has appeared in Variety, cineuropa, Middle East Eye, Off Screen, and elsewhere. Aljafari has taught at The New School and the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. He has received a fellowship from the Film Study Center-Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. He is currently a Fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Columbia University (2024–2025), and he is completing “With Hasan in Gaza,” a travelogue film to be released in 2025.
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