The Museum of Days

K. arrives in his native Jaffa after the sudden death of his uncle, M. M. was kept in a mental hospital for over 25 years. Like a lurking shadow, M. would only occasionally visit the family home and would disappear for long periods of time. K.’s attempts to discover and grasp the reasons behind M.’s death are doomed to failure. When K finds a trace of M. in the background of an Israeli fiction film – as M. accidentally roams the street behind the shooting locale – the haziness between fiction and reality is accentuated further.

In this presentation, Kamal Aljafari will be exploring ideas and thoughts drawn from a decade-long filmic practice, which led him to believe that images are not something that you make--but something that you find.

A Palestinian filmmaker based in Berlin, Kamal Aljafari is known for his distinctive approach to cinema. He studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and has held teaching positions at The New School in New York and the Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie in Berlin. He was awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University and was a fellow of the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. His installation “The Camera of the Dispossessed” was shown at the 35th Bienal de São Paulo in 2023. Aljafari was also honored at IndieLisboa 2024 with a full retrospective of his work at the Portuguese Cinematheque. His most recent work, “A Fidai Film,” premiered this year at the Visions du Réel International Film Festival in Nyon.

The Rendez-Vous de l’Institut Series is generously supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. You will find a full calendar of the Fellows’ Talks.