Elia Suleiman Biography

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Elia Suleiman (, born July 28, 1960 in Nazareth) is a Palestinian-Israeli film director and actor. He is best known for the 2002 film Divine Intervention (Arabic: Yad Ilahiyya), a modern tragic comedy on living under occupation in the Palestinian territories which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Elia Suleiman's cinematic style is oft compared to that of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, for its poetic interplay between "burlesque and sobriety".

Early Work

Between 1982-1993, Suleiman lived in New York, where he directed two short films: Introduction to the End of an Argument and Homage by Assassination, that won numerous awards.

Homage to an Assasination is a "diary film" that critiques the 1991 Gulf War via the juxtaposition of multilayered personal anecdotes. The film offers a lucid portrait of what Ella Shohat and Robert Stain have termed "cultural disembodiment," manifested in "multiple failures of communication," that reflect the contradictions of a "diasporic subject."

Pedagogical Work

In 1994, Suleiman moved to Jerusalem where he began teaching at Birzeit University. He was entrusted with the task of developing a Film and Media Department at the university with funding support from the European Commission. He has also guest lectured in universities around the world.

Feature Films

In 1996, Suleiman directed Chronicle of a Disappearance, his first feature film. It won the Best First Film Prize at the 1996 Venice Film Festival.

In 2002, Suleiman's second feature film, Divine Intervention, subtitled, A Chronicle of Love and Pain, won the Jury Prize at the Festival de Cannes and the International Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize, also receiving the Best Foreign Film Prize at the European Awards in Rome.

Other Film Work

In 2000, Suleiman released the 15-minute short film Cyber Palestine which follows a modern-day Mary and Joseph as they attempt to cross from Gaza into Bethlehem.

In his 1998 film, The Arab Dream ("Al Hilm Al-Arabi") Suleiman autobiographically explores issues of identity, expressing that: "I don't have a homeland to say I live in exile... I live in postmortem... daily life, daily death."

Suleiman was part of the nine person jury for the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

References

External links

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fr:Elia Suleiman
nl:Elia Suleiman

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