Port of Memory
Director: Kamal Aljafari
Logline: In what is left of the city of Jaffa, a man about to lose his house contemplates his fate. Meanwhile two women remain tied to their homes. In a nearby cafe an old captain sits motionless the whole day through, while another man moves restlessly like a fish in an aquarium.
Synopsis: Since the moment of its inception as a nation, Israel’s most stubborn and sustained commitment has been the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and property. While the spotlight is on the West Bank and Gaza, the emptying of Jaffa, a thriving urban and economic port city in pre-1948 Palestine, of its indigenous residents, is a story rarely told. Aljafari’s film follows his family after they receive an order to evacuate their home in Ajami, Jaffa’s once-wealthy sea-front neighborhood. Their lives and those of the other residents are thrown into disarray because they don’t have the means to fight back. Radically poetic, Port of Memory is a reflection on the absurdity of being at once absent and present, blending the mundane gestures of everyday life and collective memory. Traveling from the subjective to the objective, the film captures the essence of being Palestinian in Israel, as well as under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.