“My songs aren’t political, they just describe the place I come from.”
Aspiring rapper Kareem (Tamer Nafar), the central character in Udi Aloni’s Junction 48, infuses his every action with music: from meeting friends and family dinners to video chats with his girlfriend Manar (Samar Qupty). After a car wreck kills his father and critically injures his mother, music is the thing to which he clings. But as his hip-hop ensemble begins to rise in the ranks of acclaim, we begin to question whether his lyrics can really be divorced from his politics. The title of the film refers to the 1948 Palestine War, the aftermath of which still looms large over successive generations. The film has its share of sudden and senseless violence, deploying the single crack of a pistol to explore the intersection of personal and political tragedy.
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MOVIE NIGHTS is a screening series for a transdisciplinary exchange, that was initiated to oppose the persistent silence about the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Starting each time from one film we open the space for conversations about the relations between production of images and their conditions, involving modes of narration, authorship, history, politics and effects on society. We watch fiction, documentaries, movies and television productions focusing on filmmakers with antizionist and liberatory practices.
MOVIE NIGHTS are hosted and organized by the sections Applied Photography, Art and Communication Practices, Klasse für Alle, Philosophy, and Transcultural Studies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
