Following an act of vandalism, the filmmaker’s father decides to install a surveillance camera to record the scenes unfolding in front of the house. Everyday family life, the neighbours going to work, and the children at school, An Unusual Summer captures fleeting moments of poetry whereas, in the background, the daily choreography of the Arab district – that some name the “ghetto” – of Ramla, in current Israeli territory, comes to the surface. Composing with this visual material of low-definition aesthetics, finely punctuated with sound effects, Kamal Aljafari creates a mechanical diary of a life that scrolls past the window and succeeds with patience and infinite grace in transfiguring a film à dispositif based on a security device into a personal and eminently political fresco: “In the distant past, many years ago, in front of this house, there stood a fig tree in a garden, which has now vanished, bulldozed into memory, and swept up by History and Time.“

An Unusual Summer
Original title: صيف غير عادي
Year: 2020
Runtime: 80’
Countries: Palestine; Germany
Language: Arabic; English
Techs: Color, Black and White

director: Kamal Aljafari
cinematography: Abedeljalil Aljafari
sound: Kamal Aljafari
editing: Kamal Aljafari
Sound mixing: Rob Walker