From February 22 to 24, 2012 Villa Arson – Nice
“– Cycle #1” : ELIA SULEIMAN
In the presence of the filmmaker
Artistic advice: PHILIPPE AZOURY
Elia Suleiman is among those filmmakers for whom the political project of the film is inseparable from the aesthetic project. Often compared to Tati and Keaton, he uses the body and its movement in space, framing, and staging to tackle in an offbeat manner, the gravest political issues.
PROGRAM
-Wednesday, February 22
6:00 PM >> Conference by Elia Suleiman introduced by Philippe Azoury
8:30 PM >> Screening of Elia Suleiman’s short films, presented by the filmmaker and Philippe Azoury
Introduction to the End of an Argument by Elia Suleiman and Jayce Salloum (Palestine, 1990, 45’, with subtitles)
The most famous video of his New York period, co-directed with Jayce Salloum, a Lebanese-Canadian videographer. A patchwork and montage of images from various sources – photos, news broadcasts, fictions – depicting the Arab people and the prejudices accompanying their visual representations. This video, while mimicking the representation forms of dominant media, flips these methods and deals with the distorted image the Western world has of Arab culture in general and of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation in particular.
Cyber Palestine by Elia Suleiman (Palestine, 2001, 16’, with subtitles)
Cyber Palestine is a parable of our time, in which Mary and Joseph, turned into a contemporary Palestinian couple, return to Gaza where they have to live with the Israeli occupation. And like everyone else, they must pass a checkpoint to get to Bethlehem… Cyber Palestine is a commission from the Palestinian National Authority for the Bethlehem 2000 Project, designed to celebrate Bethlehem’s entry into the new millennium.
-Thursday, February 23
8:00 PM >> Screening followed by a discussion with Elia Suleiman
The Time That Remains by Elia Suleiman (Palestine, 2009, 1h45, with subtitles)
It is a partly autobiographical film, constructed in four significant episodes of the life of a family, my family, from 1948 to recent times.
This film is inspired by my father’s personal notebooks, starting when he was a resistance fighter in 1948, and also by letters from my mother to her family members who were forced to leave the country.
Blending my intimate memories of and with them, the film portrays the daily life of Palestinians who remained on their ancestral lands and were labeled “Arab-Israelis,” living as a minority in their own country. Elia Suleiman
-Friday, February 24
6:00 PM >> Screenings presented by Philippe Azoury
Divine Intervention by Elia Suleiman (Palestine, 2002, 1h32, with subtitles)
Es, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, is torn between the necessity to take care of his father and his love for a Palestinian woman from Ramallah. Since she can’t go beyond the checkpoint between the two cities, the couple meets in a parking lot near the checkpoint.
8:00 PM >> Chronicle of a Disappearance by Elia Suleiman (Palestine, 1996, 1h24, with subtitles)
A filmmaker returns to Israel to make a film. He sets out to observe the loss of identity of the Arab population in Israel and organizes his narrative in two parts: “Nazareth, personal journal” and “Jerusalem, political journal.” In Nazareth, his hometown, he films his extended family. His father, his mother, his friends, his neighbors. “Jerusalem, political journal” opens with a key song and closes with the end of Israeli television broadcasts in front of a sleeping Palestinian couple.
9:45 PM >> Here and Elsewhere by Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville (France / Palestine, 1974, 1h)
Here: a French family watching television.
Elsewhere: images of the Palestinian revolution.
In 1970, J-L Godard, J-P Gorin, and Marco, from the Dziga Vertov group, traveled to Jordan and Palestine to shoot Until Victory, commissioned by the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) with the subtitle Methods of Thought and Work of the Palestinian Revolution. That same year, the events of “Black September” occurred: the massacre of Palestinian fighters by the Jordanian army. The disappearance of most of the militants the three filmmakers met ended the project. In 1973, the Dziga Vertov group dissolved, J.P Gorin left the project and the film. It was completed by Anne-Marie Mieville and Jean-Luc Godard and released in 1976 under the title Here and Elsewhere. J-P Gorin stated that the footage captured focused less on a political situation than on “how to film history.”
The Guests:
Elia Suleiman is a filmmaker. A Palestinian director, screenwriter, and actor. With Chronicle of a Disappearance, winning the Best First Film Award at La Mostra in Venice in 1996, the international scene discovered him, and he gained further recognition with a Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002 for Divine Intervention. After several participations in collective projects (actor in Bamako and Je t’aime… moi non plus, director in To Each His Own Cinema), The Time That Remains was selected at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.
Philippe Azoury, film critic at Libération, regular contributor to Les Inrockuptibles and Cahiers du Cinéma. He also co-founded a blog dedicated to books (Discipline in Disorder) and writes regularly about electronic music (Alainfinkielkrautrock). He has published several cinema books: Fantômas…, Jean Cocteau and Cinema…, and A Werner Schroeter… Also a programmer at the Cinémathèque Française.
Massoumeh Lahidji, interpreter for the largest film festivals, she regularly collaborates with Abbas Kiarostami (Masterclass at Villa Arson in Nice, Cosi Fan Tutte at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, writing of Certified Copy).
