Mizna presents An Unusual Summer in collaboration with The Mosaic Rooms as part of programming affiliated with When I see the future, I close my eyes, Heba Y. Amin’s first UK solo exhibition. Curated by Anthony Downey, Amin’s exhibition showcases the latest iterations of three bodies of work by her: Project Speak2Tweet, The General’s Stork and Operation Sunken Sea. Amin investigates how politics and events in the Middle East relate to global concerns, challenging colonial narratives of conquest and control, while also exploring the totalitarian exploitation of technology and emerging forms of digital authoritarianism.
Following an act of vandalism, the Palestinian filmmaker's father decides to install a surveillance camera to record the scenes unfolding in front of the house. Through everyday family life, or neighbors going to work, An Unusual Summer captures fleeting moments of poetry whereas, in the background, the daily choreography of El Ramle under Israeli occupation, comes to the surface.
Kamal Aljafari works with moving and still images, interweaving between fiction, non-fiction, and art.
His first film The Roof (2006), won the Best International Award at the Images Festival in Toronto and Best soundtrack at Fidmarseille France, it was followed by Port of Memory (2009), which received the Prix Louis Marcorelles at Cinema du Reel Paris. In 2015 he made the film Recollection, in which he removes actors from the foreground of Israeli fiction films shot in Jaffa, to narrate the fate of a vanished city and passersby caught in the backgrounds, the film was premiered at Locarno, and toured in many art venues and museums, then followed by An Unusual Summer (2020), made with surveillance camera material filmed by his father, narrating poetry of daily life through one corner of the street in his native city. Premiered at Visions du Reel, hailed by many critics as one of the top films of 2020, the film played in many festivals; Viennale, Rotterdam, Seville, winning several awards (Best film - Black Canvas Film Festival Mexico, Jury prize - Filmmaker Festival Milan, Best film - La Muestra de cine de Lanzarote Spain). Currently he is editing Velvet Voyage, a film about a crime committed against an archive.
He was a featured artist at the 2009 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in New York, and in 2009- 2010 was the Benjamin White Whitney fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute and Film Study Center. He taught at The New School in New York, and at the German Film And Television Academy, Berlin. Showcases of his work took place at Lussas Film Festival in France and at the Cinémathèque québécoise Montréal.
- Year2020
- Runtime80 minutes
- LanguageArabic
- CountryPalestine, Germany
- DirectorKamal Aljafari
- ScreenwriterKamal Aljafari
Mizna presents An Unusual Summer in collaboration with The Mosaic Rooms as part of programming affiliated with When I see the future, I close my eyes, Heba Y. Amin’s first UK solo exhibition. Curated by Anthony Downey, Amin’s exhibition showcases the latest iterations of three bodies of work by her: Project Speak2Tweet, The General’s Stork and Operation Sunken Sea. Amin investigates how politics and events in the Middle East relate to global concerns, challenging colonial narratives of conquest and control, while also exploring the totalitarian exploitation of technology and emerging forms of digital authoritarianism.
Following an act of vandalism, the Palestinian filmmaker's father decides to install a surveillance camera to record the scenes unfolding in front of the house. Through everyday family life, or neighbors going to work, An Unusual Summer captures fleeting moments of poetry whereas, in the background, the daily choreography of El Ramle under Israeli occupation, comes to the surface.
Kamal Aljafari works with moving and still images, interweaving between fiction, non-fiction, and art.
His first film The Roof (2006), won the Best International Award at the Images Festival in Toronto and Best soundtrack at Fidmarseille France, it was followed by Port of Memory (2009), which received the Prix Louis Marcorelles at Cinema du Reel Paris. In 2015 he made the film Recollection, in which he removes actors from the foreground of Israeli fiction films shot in Jaffa, to narrate the fate of a vanished city and passersby caught in the backgrounds, the film was premiered at Locarno, and toured in many art venues and museums, then followed by An Unusual Summer (2020), made with surveillance camera material filmed by his father, narrating poetry of daily life through one corner of the street in his native city. Premiered at Visions du Reel, hailed by many critics as one of the top films of 2020, the film played in many festivals; Viennale, Rotterdam, Seville, winning several awards (Best film - Black Canvas Film Festival Mexico, Jury prize - Filmmaker Festival Milan, Best film - La Muestra de cine de Lanzarote Spain). Currently he is editing Velvet Voyage, a film about a crime committed against an archive.
He was a featured artist at the 2009 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in New York, and in 2009- 2010 was the Benjamin White Whitney fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute and Film Study Center. He taught at The New School in New York, and at the German Film And Television Academy, Berlin. Showcases of his work took place at Lussas Film Festival in France and at the Cinémathèque québécoise Montréal.
- Year2020
- Runtime80 minutes
- LanguageArabic
- CountryPalestine, Germany
- DirectorKamal Aljafari
- ScreenwriterKamal Aljafari