— Elia Suleiman, Palestinian filmmaker
By Anand Holla
Purely by the choice of his preoccupation — the bewildering strangeness of Palestinian life — Elia Suleiman had set himself up for a directorial voyage riddled with inevitable clichés. That he has consistently turned to wry humour instead of mechanised political commentary is what sets him apart.
The Nazareth-born Palestinian filmmaker’s cinematic style is often compared to that of legends such as Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton for its deft handling of absurdist comedy, and how he treats both burlesque and the serious with a similar poetic touch.
For the 54-year-old auteur, cinema, as humour, is part of the resistance. Yet, for all his incisive pointers on Israeli occupation of his homeland, Suleiman believes in a universal experience, where “when you compose an image, you should never think about the boundaries of that image.”
Suleiman was in town last week to discuss and expand upon his work and craft to an eager audience, as the Doha Film Institute screened three of his “intensely personal” films, which come together like a trilogy: Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996), Divine Intervention: A Chronicle of Love and Hope (2002), and The Time That Remains: Chronicle of a Present Absentee (2009).
While Chronicle of a Disappearance weaves narrative, history and autobiography, as Suleiman returned to Palestine after living in New York for many years to make this film, Divine Intervention — which won a Jury Prize and a FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes — is a tragicomedy about the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the daily life of Palestinians with a backdrop of a love story.
The Time That Remains, perhaps his most accomplished film, begins with the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and traverses six decades hence. The highlight is how it courses through Suleiman’s late father’s resistance activities against the Jewish paramilitary group Haganah that would soon defeat Palestine and declare the independent state of Israel.
In his review of the film, New York Times’ A O Scott aptly observed, “It has the scope of a historical epic with none of the expected heaviness. It presents a half-century of tragedy and turmoil as a series of mordant comic vignettes.”
In fact, that’s the most endearing aspect of Suleiman’s cinema — his funny tableaux approach that pack in a smattering of sketches and vignettes injected with black humour. Often, scenes play out in isolation, and yet surreptitiously blend in to a larger narrative.
A little flying pink balloon emblazoned with the face of Yasser Arafat, for instance, worries Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint as they debate whether they should shoot it down from entering the territory without permission.
That said, even a serious scene like Israeli soldiers stealing belongings from the Arab houses, thus conveying the larger idea of a nation stealing the land and identity of another, are never dished out like melodramatic sermons.
In these films, Suleiman himself forever plays the mute, stoic observer who never utters a word, blankly staring at what unfolds before him. From fleeing a pending arrest warrant in Nazareth over his affiliations with a gang, to moving to London and later New York before returning home from an “involuntary exile,” Suleiman has had an interesting journey.
Here is Suleiman unplugged from a Masterclass he held, soon after the screenings: When I was growing up in Nazareth, I didn’t want to study. I was actually fascinated by a semi-professional gang. Basically, I wanted something other than this very marginalised, ghettoised, psychologically and economically depressed small town of Nazareth. I really wanted out.
That question comes up when you reach a certain age: What do you want to be? All in my family were educated, and had become doctors or engineers. So I had to devise an answer when I would be asked this question. I began saying: I want to be a filmmaker. I had no idea what that meant or how I should go about it.
I wasn’t exactly a movie buff. I am not exactly a classic case of a filmmaker, who at age five started to shoot on Super 8. I never learnt directing, or writing and I am technically completely illiterate.
I lived in New York City for a decade, from 1982 to 1993, before returning to Palestine to teach Film and Media at Birzeit University near Ramallah, in the West Bank. It was in the US that I directed my first two shorts: Introduction to the End of an Argument and Homage by Assassination.
There was a time I didn’t know the way ahead. Then one day, I met this incredible English poet and writer John Berger, who semi-adopted me. He was my mentor. That encounter changed my life, as he got me into reading and learning more. So I started reading in my mid-20s — I had never read a book before.
Also, my friends who were studying in NYU, helped me quite a bit. I would enter their classrooms through the Fire Exit door. I would slip into the hall when the lights would dim, catch film screenings and would slip out of the same exit before the professor would realise. I began watching films.
It started with my fascination with Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu’s works. I watched Tokyo Story and it was an absolute revelation for me. It gave me confidence that I can make films and that I can see like him. Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien, who too admired Ozu’s work, inspired me to see more, learn more.
I don’t like any form of discipline. I can’t put myself into any form of learning experience. I wanted to immerse myself in extremely personal story-telling, and not just me but my parents and friends acting in the film.
Most of the actors in my films are non-actors; my mother, my father, my friends, and a lot of times, people I see passing by in Nazareth. I see something interesting in them and cast them.
I shot three films at my parents’ house. When my father first saw himself on screen, he was absolutely excited. Sometimes, he would also feel free to offer me direction on sets.
As for cinema, I find it to be a form of resistance. I can say that my films are a combination of personal diaries and political stuff. The Time That Remains, for instance, is a family portrait or a social portrait.
That is the most difficult film I have made. The diary of my father makes for the first part of the film. It’s because of my close relationship with my father that I could make this. I heard these stories from my father, who when he would fall sick, I would ask him to write them down.
My father went to prison for being part of the resistance movement. Such an event changes your life.
My space of resistance isn’t limited only to the army of Israel, but to all issues irrespective of gender or race. Israel has done me a favour by making me a citizen of the world, by engaging me with more than one front of resistance. It has made me conscious of the fact that in order to be Palestinian, you have to extend yourself to all nationalities, all races. Thanks to Israel, we don’t have a boundary. I am saying this sarcastically, of course, there’s no thanks. But this is who we are, whether we choose to resist it or be in denial of it.
In life, you have to always somehow take a leap. It’s important; despite all the risk and nerves and fear of failure, I feel you have to always stretch yourself beyond yourself in order to achieve cinematic or any creative moment as an artist. And yes, you also have to un-know what you already knew so as to move ahead.
