PORT OF MEMORY

Aljafari follows his family’s story after they receive an order to evacuate their home in Ajami, Jaffa’s seafront neighborhood of once wealthy homes and villas. The family is thrown into disarray, and a mute despair cloaks their lives because they don’t have the means to fight back. Radically poetic, blending mundane gestures of everyday life and collective memory, Port of Memory travels from the subjective to the objective.

Port of Memory follows the family of the filmmaker after they receive an order to evacuate their home in ‘Ajami, Jaffa's onceprosperous seafront neighbourhood. Their lives and those of other residents are thrown into disarray as they lack the means to fight back. Radically poetic, Port of Memory is a reflection on the absurdity of being at once absent and present as a Palestinian living within Israel today. But Aljafari’s (The Roof) new film is far more than a documentary. Fashioned out of an intoxicating blend of expressionistic, verité, and reflective genre styles, this is a statement of iconoclastic creative intent from one of the most exciting voices to emerge in Palestinian cinema for a generation. Beautifully shot and densely layered, Port of Memory brings the first week of the 2010 Palestine Film Festival to a close and is screened here for the first time in the UK. The second week of the Festival, which relocates to SOAS, Russell Square, begins with a screening of Aljafari’s previous work, The Roof – the director joins us for both screenings.

The closing film of BPFF’s 2010 festival, Port of Memory by Kamal Aljafari takes place in the crumbling neighborhood of Ajami, a once-wealthy seaside community in Jaffa. A Palestinian family faces eviction from their home of 40 years due to the systemic “gentrification” of their area, a thin veneer for Judaization. Darkly humorous and visually stunning, Port of Entry delves into the irony and heartbreak of proving one’s own existence against the threat of expulsion.

Palestine / Germany / France / United Arab Emirates

Director: Kamal Aljafari

Release Date: 2009

Duration: 63mins