Tuesday February 23, 2016

6:30PM

Schermerhorn 612

1190 Amsterdam Ave, Columbia University

“Kamal Aljafari is the chronicler of the inchronicable, visionary of the faded out. Somewhere between the early Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali (Un Chien Andalou) and the late Mani Kaul’s entire magnificent oeuvre, in his new film, Recollection, Kamal Aljafari has tapped on a disquieting vision of the ruins and debris in material and memorial, pushing as he does his previous work forward by leaps and bounds. The significance of this work is manifold, achieving two contradictory tasks in particular: dismounting the omniscient camera and staging the relic. By allowing the memory to stage and announce itself, an enduring philosophical task made essential as early as in Walter Benjamin’s prophetic turn to relics and ruins in his theory of allegory, Aljafari wonders: who is watching, who is watching the watcher, and by what authority? The damning question-Quis custodiet ipsos custodies-is here staged with astonishing confidence and ease, with the threadbare power of a visionary artist taking the instrumentality of his own art to task. The result is uncanny – you feel you have been there – but where, when, how, and now what?” -Hamid Dabashi

Professor Dabashi is a renowned film expert, and the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, which is dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian cinema. Dabashi has organized Palestinian film festivals both in Palestine and the United States and is on the advisory board of a number of other Palestinian film festivals worldwide. His edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema was the first major multi-author treatment of the subject.

This event is part of the Center for Palestine Studies art initiative, Palestine Cuts.

Free and open to the public.

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