The great film archivist of Palestinian memory, Kamal Aljafari (Ramla, 1973) uses personal and forgotten images to encapsulate the daily tragedy of an entire people. Gathering and preserving footage is central to his cinematic practice, devoted to safeguarding an identity that is constantly besieged and threatened. By filling in gaps, he secures its very survival: Aljafari doesn’t so much make films as discover them. Footage believed lost becomes the raw material of his work, where seemingly anecdotal images emerge as extraordinary revelations—witnesses that have outlived relentless Israeli destruction.  

The materiality of film is his obsession. His body of work is rich in texture, ranging from the ethereal grain of found celluloid to the low‑resolution harshness of security‑camera video. These remnants become a springboard for challenging conventional portrayals of the Palestinian‑Israeli conflict, sliding fluidly from documentary to essay while embracing innovative aesthetic perspectives.  

Port of Memory (2010) portrays Aljafari’s own family to expose the paradox of a Palestinian living in Israel—inhabiting his homeland while being treated as a perpetual outsider. Recollection (2015) re‑edits footage from films shot in Jaffa between the 1960s and 1990s, redefining the city’s identity and returning it to its people. An Unusual Summer (2020) assembles recordings from Aljafari’s father’s surveillance camera, creating a portrait of Ramla that reveals hidden traces of occupation. Finally, A Fidai Film (2024) resurrects an entire Palestinian visual archive looted by the Israeli army in Lebanon and long presumed lost, forging an immense act of cinematic resistance that echoes Mahmud Darwish’s verses: “On this land there is something worth living for… It was called Palestine. It is still called Palestine.”  

Aljafari’s films prove that alternative narratives—and, above all, alternative points of view—are possible. If occupation has stripped Palestinians of their place in the world, his work reframes surviving images: erasing colonizers, foregrounding the colonized, and spotlighting every sign of life. In doing so, he affirms cinema’s enduring power as a tool of liberation.  

Javier H. Estrada, member of the Documenta Madrid selection committee and curator of this programme, in collaboration with  Filmoteca Española.