Kamal Aljafari

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Kamal Aljafari is a filmmaker and visual artist who graduated from the Kunsthochschule für Medien (Academy of Media Arts) in Cologne, Germany. His films include the short Visit Iraq (2003) and the award-winning The Roof (2006), a quiet, personal testament to the history and daily oppression of Palestinians living in Israel. The Roof won the Best International On Screen (Video) Award at the Images Festival in Toronto and also the award for best soundtrack at the FID Marseille documentary festival in France. It has been shown at many international festivals. Aljafari is currently completing a new film, Port of Memory. It explores the semi-ruins of the city of Jaffa and the Palestinian community that remains there. The city has been used as a stage set for Middle Eastern battlefronts in American action films and Israeli films of the 1970s and 1980s. Aljafari received a 2004 visual arts prize from the city of Cologne, a Stiftung Kunstfonds art fellowship in Germany in 2005, and an award from the Sundance Documentary Fund in 2007. He was a featured artist at the 2009 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar at Colgate University in New York.