Palestinian Film Days, the first of its kind here in Czech Republic, started Thursday in Prague. The goal of the organizers of the project is to present Palestinians in a different light than what is often portrayed in the mainstream media. The first film to be screened was The Time that Remains (2009) by Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, who was flown in from Paris to attend the event. The film, semi-autobiographical, is in part based on his father Fuad’s diaries and stretches from 1948 into the present time. Suleiman is mostly known for his highly controlled, stylized and humorous scenes, almost always of a deadpan nature. Although he has often been compared to Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, his films also manifest a sense of sadness, isolation, and alienation, fused with the evident absurdist comedy. Many of the scenes in The Time that Remains combine resignation and resolve, hope and despair, gentleness and rigidity. The common denominator in his films, including Divine Intervention (2002), which received the Jury Award at the Cannes Film Festival, is the Palestine conflict.
Q: You’ve stated that your films speak about all conflicts and not at all a metaphor of Palestine. What do you mean by that?
Suleiman: I’m trying to use Palestine as a microcosm of the world, but maybe the world is a microcosm of Palestine. We’re living in a moment that has lost attachment to the ideology behind boundaries. Although perverse, this fits me: I’m collateral damage. I’m not in the business of saying just one thing about just one place. If you only see Palestine in my films, then I’ve failed because then I’m just a provincial filmmaker. I think that whatever we express in terms of the potential truth is above all else about mobilizing ourselves for ourselves. We learn about ourselves as individuals. Identification with Palestine is universal and not restricted to geographic boundaries. It’s a question of moral and ethical positions vis-à-vis all the injustices that surround us.
Q: You’ve also stated that you don’t adhere to a Palestinian national identity. That triggered my interest in terms of what you indeed identify as?
Suleiman: The issue is not so much identity as it is identification. I suppose it can be seen as a mischievous answer. Palestine is an extremely familiar place to me. Someone like me who lives everywhere in the world cannot be contained. If my hope and ambitions are in the right place, you can judge that in my films. I want to make films that diffuse any local notion. Cinema criss-crosses borders and check points. If the film is good, then it’s universal.
Q: How do you think that film festivals such as the newly started Palestinian Film Days here in Prague can begin to change people’s perceptions of Palestinians, Palestine, and the conflict?
Suleiman: I don’t really know what people’s perception about Palestinians is here. All art is to better life. We want to create hope and share with others. Create more pleasure, and object to despair. Really it’s about that. A space where we can be less aggressed upon.
Q: Why do you make films?
Suleiman: That’s a very difficult question. I never studied cinema and I don’t really know how I fell into it. It’s who I am. I wanted to be a painter but really I’m handicapped in that. I really can’t even handle a remote control. I cannot really separate myself from my films. Film-making is a spiritual process.
Q: Is cinema an artistic and/or political tool to achieve an end or an end in itself, in your view?
Suleiman: People mistake my films for historic lessons sometimes. I’m not interested in that. The films might instigate an interest in the history of an area or a conflict but that’s not my primary aim at all. You really don’t learn much about Palestine by watching my films. My primary aim is to loosen people ideologically, shake the foundation of righteousness. I want the viewer to doubt and to question. This is where the poetic dimension comes in.
I want us to flow from our skins into other people’s skin. My films are supposed to ask question, not to give answers. Many evil things come from righteousness.
Q: How have audiences in Israel reacted to your film The Time that Remains?
Suleiman: Two things happened in Israel. It was painful for audiences to watch…anguishing, but it was appreciated by the critics. Israel is not just one thing. There’s a fascistic component but there’s also another side. There are universal witnesses, universal intellectuals and cultivated people there too. There’s also a cultural angle to the people, and there are a few who have resisted oppression in all its forms in Israel. And these people usually come to my defense. There are those who try to see me as an enemy of Israel but that’s idiotic, and many people defend me. The narrative of Palestine is also a concept. Not just a memory. It’s something you carry with you wherever you go. I’d say that there’s something quite Jewish about being Palestinian. Really, I would. I’m willing to bear intense moments of melancholy because I dream about that one place, the loss of Palestine. It doesn’t even necessarily need to be Palestine. It could be wherever. You miss all that you don’t have. I’m always on the move, even when I’m static and standing. Do I give that up? I tried stability but I failed. I want to be me but I also want to be many other people that I encounter in the world. You are not in the forefront of resistance and this is where the poetry comes in. That which makes the whole, is scattered across the world.
Q: The character you play in your films is often quite passive and merely observes what unfolds around him. Why is that?
Suleiman: Often my main thought is where exactly do I position the camera and where do I draw the line? In my case it’s always me asking if I should back off or if I can go a little further. There are moments when my character is more actively engaged, no longer a translucent character. It’s really an attempt of democratization. My decentralized presence, not conceptual, is an attempt of democratization. A lot of narrative films leave you no space for anything else but eating popcorn. I want to go in the complete opposite direction. I have to evacuate all psychology, to be less a protagonist and more a presence.
Q: What feeling and thoughts do you hope to instill in your audience?
Suleiman: If a person just takes what is socio-political and geographical from the themes of my films then that’s not enough. But if the person goes out of the theatre and, for example, makes the dinner he’s eating later on, extra nice then I feel that I have succeeded. We have this urge to anaesthetize the moment we’re living in. What I always focus on is how I can maximize the pigmentation in the image. I don’t want what you see on the screen to just be a brief notion of pleasure but something that lingers. The idea is to have the images revisited. I want it to be something that also enhances the soul. I want the moment of pleasure to produce an attachment.
Q: Over the years you’ve stated numerous times that you don’t believe in a two-states solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Do you still hold that view?
Suleiman: Yes, I’ve said that on several occasions. I still believe that. I don’t think there should be a Palestinian state because I don’t believe in states. The problem is that when you grow absolutely certain that all authorities are corrupt, then that would include the Palestinian authorities as well.
Q: How does fiction further our notion of history?
Suleiman: I think it starts with a desire but not the desire to prove anything. I try to use fiction in order to reduce the potentiality of something being true. We produce our own memories so I’m not sure of truth. I don’t particularly have a good memory. I think history is many times just the text written by the victors. I wanted to counter that aspect. The Time that Remains is a way of interpreting a certain ambience or emotion. These are the stories that my father told me over the course of fifteen or twenty years. I used to listen to him. From the cowardly part of my character, I’m always in fear of not telling the right story. I’m not interested in making epics. What helped was that every single element of what you’ve seen…I shot almost all of this in one single neighborhood, my neighborhood. It made it more intimate for me. The director is not God. It’s important for me to not historicize. I work to diffuse the issue of identity and to intensify identification. You have to lose your authority in the making of a film to achieve this. The film is about me being absolutely dislocated. I focus on the very personal to arrive at the very political.