A Fidai Film review – Palestinian collage film transforms suppressed footage into works of art
Using archive material of destroyed houses, terrorised children and dead bodies, Kamal Aljafari adds humanity to the reels by overlaying poems by Palestinian authorsIn Arabic, “fidai” means someone willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Borrowing this word, which is at times used in a military context, for his collage film, Palestinian film-maker Kamal Aljafari stages a potent uprising of images against the tide of propaganda and historical erasure. Much of the film draws on archive materials once housed in the Palestine Research Centre in Beirut. In 1982, during the Lebanese civil war, Israeli forces raided the centre and seized the archive. Most of these documents on Palestinian history – books, newspapers, audiovisual artefacts – are believed to still be in the hands of the Israeli army.Obtained through clandestine means, the footage that resurfaces in Aljafari’s film b
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