Darat al Funun is pleased to present a film series curated by Emily Jacir to run concurrently with her exhibition at Darat al Funun. Over the course of three months Jacir will be presenting a series of seven pivotal films which have influenced her and her practice, or which her work is in dialogue with. Her work investigates personal and collective movement through public space and its implications on the physical and social experience of trans-Mediterranean space and time, in particular between Italy and Palestine.

Besides her own films and videos, Jacir has a long history with cinema from curating some of the first Arab and Palestinian Film programs for NYC with Alwan for the Arts between 1999 – 2002, to conceiving of and co-curating the first Palestine International Video Festival in Ramallah in 2002. She also curated a selection of shorts, “Palestinian Revolution Cinema (1968 -1982)” which went on tour in 2007. Select film juries that Jacir has served on include Visions du Reel Festival international du cinéma (2014), Berlinale Shorts International Jury (2012), and the Cinema XXI Jury Rome Film Festival (2012).

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Heavily influenced by Italian neo-realism, ‘The Battle of Algiers’ (1966; Gillo Pontecorvo) was commissioned by the Algerian government and reconstructs the events that occurred in the capital of French occupied Algeria between November 1954 and December 1957, during the Algerian War of Independence. The film was inspired by ‘Souvenirs de la Bataille d'Alger’, by Saadi Yacef. Local Algerians play inhabitants of the Casbah, and Western tourists were recruited to play the parts of Europeans. The only professional actor in the film is Jean Martin who plays Colonel Mathieu. Saadi Yacef plays himself. The film was banned in France until 1971.