Living Archives, Memory, and Ghosts
Filmmaker Kamal Aljafari and writer Gil Hochberg explore the intersections of their work in this special conversation at Reid Hall. Aljafari discusses The Museum of Days, an extension of his film trilogy set in post-1948 Jaffa, while Hochberg shares insights from her research based on past exhibitions, including Jews and Muslims: From Colonial France to the Present Day.
Atelier is produced by the Columbia Global Paris Center, a Columbia University initiative housed at Reid Hall.
A Palestinian filmmaker based in Berlin, Kamal Aljafari is known for his distinctive approach to cinema. He studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and has held teaching positions at The New School in New York and the Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie in Berlin. He was awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University and was a fellow of the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. His installation “The Camera of the Dispossessed” was shown at the 35th Bienal de São Paulo in 2023. Aljafari was also honored at IndieLisboa 2024 with a full retrospective of his work at the Portuguese Cinematheque. His most recent work, “A Fidai Film,” premiered this year at the Visions du Réel International Film Festival in Nyon.
Gil Z. Hochberg is Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies at Columbia University and Chair of the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS). Her research focuses on the intersections among psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, nationalism, gender and sexuality. She is the author of three books, co-editor of two and has published numerous essays on the politics of art in the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Her latest book, Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future (Duke University Press, 2021), is winner of the 2022 René Wellek Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association.
