You can watch the film between 25 and 28 March 2021 here. Please note that there is a limit of 200 free tickets. 

Join us for this screening of Kamal Aljafari’s newest film, An Unusual Summer (2020) presented by Mizna in collaboration with The Mosaic Rooms.

Following an act of vandalism on a car, the filmmaker’s father decided to install a surveillance camera the street outside his house. The camera recorded the scenes unfolding in front of the Palestinian home. Moments of everyday family life, neighbours going to work. An Unusual Summer captures fleeting moments of poetry. In the background, the daily choreography of El Ramle under Israeli occupation comes to the surface.

The film depicts and critiques, the impact and meaning of surveillance technologies -those we know about, those we think we know about, and those we willingly participate in every time we pick up our devices. Acknowledging the realities of corporate and governmental forms of surveillance, violence, and control, the film also explores the banality of the modern surveillance state and our complicity within it.

The online screening is followed by a discussion between filmmaker Kamal Aljafari and writer and critic Kareem Estefan on 27 March 5pm GMT. In addition, artist and writer Lamia Abukhadra composed a critical essay on An Unusual Summer.

Kamal Aljafari | An Unusual Summer | Germany/Palestine | 2020 | 80 mins

FILMMAKER AND PARTNER BIOGRAPHIES

This event is part of the public programme for Heba Y. Amin’s exhibition When I see the future, I close my eyes. The exhibition is curated by Anthony Downey.

This is also the debut event of Mizna ’s spring film series on Surveillance. It continues April 28–May 2 with Al Asleyeen (2017) by Marwan Hamed and May 26–30 with Empty Metal by Bayley Sweitzer and Adam Khalil.

Image: Kamal Aljafari, An Unusual Summer, 2020. Still. Courtesy of the filmmaker.