New Films Presented by Livia Bloom

Monday, February 14th-Sunday, February 20th, 7:30pm

Documentary in Bloom: New Films Presented by Livia Bloom

The Day Was a Scorcher

Ken Jacobs, 2009, 8min.

In this remarkable stroboscopic work, New York City avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs takes a dynamic approach to the notion of documentary. The director animates photographs of his wife and children taken on a trip to Rome in the 1970s, re-visiting and re-living the past in a distinctly modern way.

Port of Memory

Kamal Aljafari, 2009, 71min.

In this art world hit, director turns his camera inward: On his Palestinian family and the details of their lives in Israel; on Jaffa and Ramle, the cities of his youth; and on the decaying architecture that is the silent battleground for Israeli and Palestinian social and cultural conflict and the site of his childhood. Aljafari begins his exploration in Ramle with a lyrical split-screen study of the bare structural bones of innumerable terraces and porticos that once overlooked the city in Balconies, a prologue to Port of Memory. He then moves across Jaffa in the midst of gentrification, studying the faces of his family as they brace themselves in the face of the harrowing specter of losing their family home. Aljafari deftly integrates fictional cinematic techniques reminiscent of Antonioni and Bresson into vivid, emotional, and contemporary documentary.

Director Kamal Aljafari will be available for a post screening Q&A on Friday, February 18th and Saturday, February 19th

Friday’s screening and discussion will also be followed by a reception sponsored By Sugar Hill Ale!