Join Mizna and the Mosaic Rooms for a discussion between filmmaker Kamal Aljafari and writer and critic Kareem Estefan. The filmmaker discussion will take place on Saturday 3/27 12 pm CST / 5 pm GMT.
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.
Kareem Estefan is a writer, editor, art critic and PhD candidate in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. He is currently writing a dissertation on witnessing and worldbuilding in contemporary Palestinian visual culture.
Kareem’s art writing, book reviews, interviews, and essays have been published in magazines and journals including 4 Columns, Art in America, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, Ibraaz, Journal of Palestine Studies, Movement Research Performance Journal, The New Inquiry, The New York Times T Magazine, and Third Text, among others. He is co-editor, with Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich, of Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production (OR Books, 2017), an anthology of essays by artists, curators, activists, and scholars on boycott campaigns, transnational solidarities, and (self-)censorship in the arts. Kareem has worked as an editor on a freelance basis, and at nonprofits in the arts and journalism, most recently as associate editor of Creative Time Reports, an online magazine of New York-based public art nonprofit Creative Time that featured artists' perspectives on international social and political issues.
Join Mizna and the Mosaic Rooms for a discussion between filmmaker Kamal Aljafari and writer and critic Kareem Estefan. The filmmaker discussion will take place on Saturday 3/27 12 pm CST / 5 pm GMT.
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.
Kareem Estefan is a writer, editor, art critic and PhD candidate in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. He is currently writing a dissertation on witnessing and worldbuilding in contemporary Palestinian visual culture.
Kareem’s art writing, book reviews, interviews, and essays have been published in magazines and journals including 4 Columns, Art in America, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, Ibraaz, Journal of Palestine Studies, Movement Research Performance Journal, The New Inquiry, The New York Times T Magazine, and Third Text, among others. He is co-editor, with Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich, of Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production (OR Books, 2017), an anthology of essays by artists, curators, activists, and scholars on boycott campaigns, transnational solidarities, and (self-)censorship in the arts. Kareem has worked as an editor on a freelance basis, and at nonprofits in the arts and journalism, most recently as associate editor of Creative Time Reports, an online magazine of New York-based public art nonprofit Creative Time that featured artists' perspectives on international social and political issues.