Saturday, October 19
︎ 18:00-21:00
︎ Cinema at MAC Birmingham

PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN SOLIDARITY SCREENING 2: SCRUTINISING THE ENEMY

PARADISO, XXXI, 108 by Kamal Aljafari (18 mins) 
INTERCEPTED by Oksana Karpovych (95 mins)
Q&A (60 mins)
pre-screening reception (17:00-18:00)

Screening Rights Film Festival is bringing the latest socially engaged and formally innovative cinema from the Global South to audiences in the West Midlands. The centrepiece of its 10th-anniversary edition, subtitled Double Bill, consists of two Palestinian-Ukrainian solidarity screenings designed to complement one another. The second of these, featuring Kamal Aljafari’s Paradiso, XXXI, 108 and Oksana Karpovych’s Intercepted, is ingenious reclaiming of the russian and ‘israeli’ military propaganda. Based on a simple premise — putting the enemy front and centre — both films demystify the logic (or lack thereof) and functioning (or rather dysfunctioning) of imperial regimes with stark clarity, without losing an ounce of humanity.

PARADISO, XXXI, 108
Kamal Aljafari / 2022 / Germany, State of Palestine / 18’ / Hebrew with English subtitles

Already renowned for his work with archives, Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari takes this engagement to a new level in the subtly sarcastic short Paradiso, XXXI, 108. Through the recontextualised images of military training and explosions, appropriated from the ‘israeli’ state propaganda, Aljafari exposes the occupation army’s obsession with weaponry, masculinity, and the gamification of war. The fact that the film does not feature a single Palestinian person highlights the ongoing dehumanisation of Palestinians in the eyes of the death cult that is the Zionist entity.

INTERCEPTED
Oksana Karpovych / 2024 / Canada, France, Ukraine / 95’ / Russian, Ukrainian with English subtitles

Similarly to her full-length documentary debut, Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open, shot on elektrychkas — the local trains that Ukrainians use to commute between large cities and smaller towns — Oksana Karpovych’s highly acclaimed Intercepted consists of oral testimonies. This time around, however, these belong not to Ukrainian commuters but to russian soldiers in Ukraine during the full-scale invasion, who are having phone conversations with their families back home. Intercepted and recorded by the Ukrainian military, these calls expose russians as fundamentally demoralised and often clueless as to the reasons for their presence in Ukraine. Soldiers openly confess to the worst war crimes, while their families encourage them to steal yet another household appliance. Through a simple yet overwhelmingly effective juxtaposition of harrowing audio recordings with the devastated natural and urban landscapes of Ukraine, the film names and shames the aggressor, all the while humanising those to whom it is dedicated: ‘ordinary Ukrainians, who fearlessly resist the imperialist russian machine.’

The screening will be accompanied by a panel discussion, featuring guest curators and invited panelists. The screening will be preceded by a reception, featuring traditional food from the local businesses.

CONTENT WARNING: Please note that both films feature images and explicit audio descriptions of war and war crimes. Intercepted features Russian language, which may be triggering to some, including obscenities and language that denigrates Ukrainian people.

Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker based in Berlin. He works with moving and still images, interweaving between fiction, non-fiction, and art.

Read film scholar Pablo Alvarez’s guest response to Paradiso, XXXI, 108

Oksana Karpovych is a Ukrainian filmmaker based in Montreal. In her projects Karpovych explores everyday lives of the common people and how the state politics invades the personal sphere and the influence it has on the communities she intimately documents.

Read Ukrainian author Misha Honcharenko’s guest response to Intercepted