Atòmica
Atòmica
A FIDAI FILM
Director: Kamal Aljafari Country and year: Palestine, Germany, Qatar, France, Brazil, 2024 Duration: 78′ Language: Arabic, English, Hebrew Version: VO subt. cat. Place: Filmoteca de Catalunya
Date: Thursday 20/2, 18:00. With the author presence. Saturday 22/2, 18:00, post-screening conversation between the author and the philosopher Xavier Bassas.
Catalan premiere
Synopsis: In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded Beirut. During this period, it raided the Palestinian Research Centre and looted its archive, which contained historical documents on Palestine, including collections of still and moving images. A Fidai Film aims to create a counter-narrative to this loss, exploring forms of cinematic sabotage to reclaim and restore devastated memories through an exploration of identity, memory and resistance.
Awards and festivals: Jury Award Visions du Réel, Award Cine+ GNCR Fid Marseille, Award Cinematic Vision Award Camden IFF, IndieLisboa, Sarajevo Film Festival, États généraux Lussas, BFI London, FIC Valdivia, Ji.hlava IDFF, MIDBO Bogotá, RIDM Montréal, SEMINCI Valladolid, Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote, DocPoint Helsinki, among others.
SHORT FILM SESSION: BALCONIES / PARADISO, XXXI, 108 / UNDR / FEW CAN SEE
A session of four short films reflecting on the meanings and times represented in archival images through their appropriation, rearrangement and reconstruction. Featuring films by Kamal Aljafari and Frank Sweeney.
Duration: 84′ Date and place: Friday 21/2 at 21:00. Filmoteca de Catalunya (VO cat). With the presence of Kamal Aljafari. Sunday 23/2 at 17:30, Cinema Zumzeig (VO cast).
BALCONIES
Director: Kamal Aljafari Duration: 8′ Country and year: Palestine, Lebanon, 2003. No dialogues
Synopsis: An experimental meditation focusing on the deteriorated and unfinished balconies in Kamal Aljafari’s hometown of Ramla, inspired by Federico García Lorca’s Romance Sonámbulo. “But I am no longer me, nor is my house still my house…” (Sfeir-Semier Art Gallery).
PARADISO, XXXI, 108
Director: Kamal Aljafari Duration: 18′ Country and year: Germany, Palestine, 2022. Language: Hebrew Version: VO subt cat. / cast.
Synopsis: As chilling as it is absurd, Aljafari’s Paradiso reuses archive footage from Israeli military propaganda, transforming it into a fictional drama of men playing war. Drawing inspiration from a Borges short story, it questions the depiction of violence on screen, its relationship to real-world horrors, and our position as viewers.
Awards and festivals: Best experimental film – German Critics Award. Locarno Film Festival, Viennale, IFFR, Clermont-Ferrand Short FF, Camden IFF, Filmmaker Milano, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Independent Film Festival of Athens, Filmfest Dresden and others.
UNDR
Director: Kamal Aljafari Duration: 15′ Country and year: Palestine, 2024. No dialogues.
Synopsis: Helicopter footage examines the desert, surveying ancient natural formations and human interventions. Dynamite changes the face of the land. Farmers work their fields. Children play hide-and-seek. Employing archival footage, UNDR constructs an eerie narrative of calculated incursion. We cannot help but recall that Palestine remains a land subjected to aerial surveillance that seeks to appropriate the landscape (Nicholas Davies, IFFR).
Awards and festivals: Best Short Film Lima Alterna, Best film EXIS Seul. IFFR Rotterdam, Berwick Media & Art Festival, Karlovy Vary, EDOC Ecuador, Uppsala, ZINEBI, among others.
FEW CAN SEE
Director: Frank Sweeney Duration: 43′ Country and year: Ireland, 2024. Language: English Version: VO subt. cat. / cast.
Synopsis: Artist Frank Sweeney explores the history of Irish television broadcasts altered by censorship during the conflict in Northern Ireland. Drawing on oral interviews and activists’ archives, he recreates past textures and dubbing techniques invented to circumvent bans, reimagining these non-existent archives.
Awards and festivals: Tiger Shorts Award IFFR Rotterdam, Second Diamond Award European Short Film, Special Mention Filmadrid. Belfast FF, Curtas Vila do Conde, Verbatim Anthology Film Archives and others.
DOUBLE SESSION: FESTA MAJOR
Two films that portray the concept of festivity and celebration, between ethnography and revelry, separated by several decades. Featuring the recent work of Jean-Baptiste Alazard (Festa Major, 2024) and the restoration of a 1933 film about the Festa Major of Sant Cugat del Vallès, filmed by Eusebi Ferré Borrell.
Duration: 87′ Date and place: Saturday 22/2, 21:00, Filmoteca de Catalunya. Sunday 23/2, 12:00, Zumzeig Cinema. With the presence of Jean-Baptiste Alazard.
Buy tickets Zumzeig (vermouth sesssion, includes drink).
CATALAN MOSAIC NO. 2: FESTA MAJOR
Director: Eusebi Ferré Borrell Duration: 17′ Country and year: Spain, 1933. No dialogues.
Synopsis: A documentary about the Festa Major (town festival) of Sant Cugat del Vallès held in September 1933, awarded the first amateur film prize (Passo Ridotto) at the 2nd Venice Biennale. Directed by Eusebi Ferré, a pioneer of Catalan amateur cinema, it documents and stages the activities of those days, serving as a historical record of the municipality and its rural life. Digitised and restored by the Filmoteca de Catalunya.
FESTA MAJOR
Director: Jean-Baptiste Alazard Country and year: France, 2024 Duration: 70′ Language: French Version: VO subt.cat. Spanish Premiere
For over a century, the small village of Fillols, located in the French Pyrenees in the Conflent region, has celebrated the Festa Major towards the end of August. One of its residents, Jean-Baptiste, captures the magic and light of this tradition on stunning 16mm film. A sudden explosion of joy, the sounds of the copla, ceaseless dancing, love and confessions, camaraderie soaked in alcohol – a timeless and liberating revelry at the foot of Canigó mountain.
Awards and festivals: Audience Award FID Marseille. Entrevues Belfort, Festival Cinémed Montpellier, Nova Cinema Brussels.
SHORT 3D FILM SESSION: INNER AND OUTER WORLDS
This session is a unique experience that immerses us in the history of experimental 3D techniques. Curated and presented by filmmaker Blake Williams, the audience will need to use four different types of 3D glasses during the screening (Anaglyph, Pulfrich, ChromaDepth, and Diffraction). Session with stroboscopic effects.
Duration: 65′ Language: no dialogues Date and place: Friday 21/2, 19:30. Zumzeig Cinema.
- Opening the Nineteenth Century: 1896 (1990, Ken Jacobs, 16mm, 9′). Pulfrich 3D.
- Other Urban Lives (Ken Jacobs, 2023, digital, silent, 6′). No glasses.
- Red Capriccio (Blake Williams, 2014, digital, sound, 7′). Anaglyph 3D.
- Airships 1, 2, 3 (Kenneth Anger, 2013, digital, sound, 9′). Anaglyph 3D.
- Speechless (Scott Stark, 2008, digital, sound, 13′). No glasses.
- Apotheosis (Lillian F. Schwartz, 1972, digital, sound, 5′). ChromaDepth 3D.
- Photosynthesis (Brian Zahm, 2023, digital, sound, 7′). ChromaDepth 3D.
- Wall (Takashi Ito, 1987, 16mm, sound, 7′). No glasses.
- Let Your Light Shine (Jodie Mack, 2013, 16mm, sound, 3′). Diffraction.
Downloadable information sheet (pdf), Spanish / English.
