PORT OF MEMORY
by Kamal Aljafari
2009, 62 min, digital

“Walled-up houses, notice of expulsion, immobile consumers in a café, an eccentric individual driving round on his scooter shouting, a sick old woman and her daughter glued to a television set, stray cats, the anxiety of a couple tetanized by the somber certainties of the future, and to finish, a cemetery overlooking the sea and night drawing in on the terraces. The picture that Aljafari paints for us of Jaffa is that of a shrinking skin slowly closing in on its resigned inhabitants, who are crushed by fate, whatever they say about it, as if the slow-motion repetition of everyday gestures were their only way of suspending the course of time, of delaying the inevitable.” –Javier Packer y Comyn, CINÉMA DU RÉEL

Preceded by:
VISIT IRAQ
2003, 26 min, digital
A short film about the abandoned Iraqi Airways office in Geneva, VISIT IRAQ was made during Aljafari’s studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.