Kino Palestine: A follow-up presentation and discussion

synopsis

The seminar includes a screening of the film A Fidai Film (K. Aljafari, 2024). The seminar provides the historical context for a series of dispossessed Palestinian films – over one hundred documentary films produced between 1968 and 1982 by filmmakers associated with the Palestinian Film Unit and the Palestinian Cinema Institute. The presentation focuses on issues related to the limited availability or complete absence of these films, re-discovering them and gaining access to them. It also provides a comprehensive overview of the current activities in the field of the digital restoration or production of new projects, concluding discussion on the need for self-determined narratives, cultural representation and memory. The speakers are the Kino Palestine collective members, Marguerite Farag and Zaher Jureidini, and NFA curator and archivist Matej Strnad moderates the discussion.

biography

Marguerite Farag is an Egyptian filmmaker who was born and raised in Cairo. After graduating from the American University in Cairo (AUC), she worked in various film professions and academia as an assistant at AUC and as a co-organiser of local festivals such as the Panorama European Film Festival and the El Gouna Film Festival. In 2022, she completed her MA in Montage at FAMU, where she specialised in editing animated and documentary shorts as well as experimental films. She continues to work at FAMU, now as a lecturer focusing on editing and short films.

Zaher Jureidini is a Lebanese cinematographer based in Prague, Beirut and Berlin. He holds a master's degree in Cinematography from FAMU. His work touches on socio-political issues and diverse artistic expressions. His most recent films include the Czech-Lebanese short Sea Salt (2023), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Zaher is also involved in curatorial work, film theory and research. His work includes a research residency at the Etc. gallery in Prague, where he focused on how moving images shape political and historical narratives and the methods by which they resist erasure.