Port of Memory

Join us on e-flux Video & Film for an online screening of Kamal Aljafari’s Port of Memory (2010), streaming from Wednesday, September 1 through Thursday, September 30, 2021. The film is presented as part of the monthly series Staff picks.

Once a thriving Palestinian port city, Jaffa has now become an extension of Tel Aviv. It often served as the backdrop for action films set in the Middle East, featuring the likes of Chuck Norris. Aljafari offers a subtle portrait and memoir of a disappearing city that has been changed forever by incessant construction, gentrification, and dispossession of its inhabitants. It quietly traces the streets of Jaffa and follows the rhythms of life of the city and its people, centered around mundane rituals and occurrences that instil a sense of normalcy. We find a cat napping lazily on the TV, an elderly parent being taken care of, a family watching TV, and hands being washed repetitively. Against this seemingly still décor, the filmmaker’s family are at risk of eviction if they cannot prove their ownership of their house.

… this is a work that can only be seen, not talked about; all that can be said is that it brings cinema to a place beyond the question of fiction, documentary and video art. Not only that; it does so as if no camera were there, or there were a camera without a man – the invisibility here is of film itself. (Sight & Sound magazine, London)

For more information, contact program [​at​] e-flux.com.