Since his first film Chronicle of Disappearance, Palestinian director Ellia Suleiman secured the prize for best work at Venice Festival. Then his film Divine Intervention followed and won the jury prize at Cannes International Film Festival.
Responding to a question whether his last film won the prize at Cannes festival for pure political or artistic reasons, Suleiman told the daily al Hayat, “I can say that because I am Palestinian in depth, the film has a big cinematic value. Or because the film includes a high cinematic value, it is in depth Palestinian film. I don’t know how to distinguish between these affairs.”
“If you want to introduce me only as a Palestinian who directed a film, I think the problem will be in this presentation because that would incorporate an arrogant outlook. In this case I will appear as a sad Palestinian who comes with his film talking about the Israeli occupation as if he were begging sympathy. On the contrary the politics in the film is the same cinematic politics. I did not express the politics in Palestine only but I also express it cinematically through presenting it by picture and through customizing the original pictures which depict the Palestinian issue. The new language is the one that can politicize politics and rejuvenate the politicization of the Palestinian issue.”
He added, “according to them, being a Palestinian I should have presented a polite film from the political point of view, which includes a message for peace loving. They expected me to direct a film that features a good Israeli to serve as a hope for us as Palestinians on the basis that our hope must always be through the Israelis. So they nominated Amos Ghitai’s film to participate in the official contest. All journalists inside and outside the festival asked me whether I saw Ghitai’s film or not as if they were saying to both of us come and love each other cinematically. The press as a whole including magazines wanted to be with us. Why?
This is due to the fact that they want to assert that there is an Israeli behind every important man or to prove that a Palestinian cannot ever stand on his feet alone as if he had only one foot.”
Commenting on the political acting, which the west tries to demand from us, he said, “I believe this is some sort of sidelining the cinema due to their arrogance. This means there is a predetermined suspicion in our ability to make films with international dimensions. Once Amos and myself collaborated in one work to make sarcastic of this issue.”
Commenting on the scene about the transformation of the lost beloved girl due to occupation into a Ninja girl who resists the Israelis and changes the bullets shot at her to sacred halo around her head, Suleiman said, “this is one form of absorbing the bullets or violence by transforming their symbol into halo. In other words transforming explosion into victory even in fantasy.”
Responding to a question about the Palestinian state, Suleiman said, “I don’t reject the principle of national statehood. I reject the Zionist State and any state with apartheid ideology. I have no problem if the name continues to be Israel if it becomes a state for Palestinians and Jews free of apartheid and Zionist ideology orientation, the imperialistic and expansionist orientation.”
“The independent Palestinian state should be established because it simply means the end of the Israeli occupation,” added Suleiman -- Albawaba.com
