Word: elia
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Heard any good Palestinian jokes lately? In TV news clips, the inhabitants of the occupied territories don't seem to be a laughing people. That's one reason Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention is a cure for nagging ethnic generalities. This Palestinian sort-of-comedy has a sly wit that amuses and disturbs in equal, salubrious measure. From the Santa Claus who gets a cleaver in his chest to the Israeli cop who relies on a blindfolded Arab prisoner to give directions to a stranger, the film mixes the deadpan delight of Buster Keaton's classics with the elegant image...
...national committee made up of a group of impartial filmmakers. Palestine, lacking many of the trappings of a nation, also lacks any such committee. "We were going to construct a committee for the purpose of submitting the film, but we never got that far," says the film's director, Elia Suleiman. "At least now the academy might have to re-evaluate the logistics of how they reject or accept films...
...least Tajikistan is a nation, unlike Palestine. As director Elia Suleiman says, "It's a concept, not a country." Most people would not guess that Palestine had even one filmmaker; if you asked them to define "Palestinian film," they'd say it was newsreel footage of a suicide bomber. And don't even ask about a Palestinian sense of humor. Yet Suleiman's Divine Intervention, which won a jury prize, was one of the most sophisticated and, in its dark way, funniest films at Cannes...
...Semitism. That charge was answered on opening day when Woody Allen, France's favorite U.S. auteur, showed up to say he loved the French and commended them for voting the straight anti-anti-Semitic ticket in the recent election. Then Cannes presented its first-ever Palestinian film in competition: Elia Suleiman's monstrously witty Divine Intervention, in which a balloon with Yasser Arafat's face on it floats across an Israeli military checkpoint, and a Palestinian Ninja babe beats the enemy with maneuvers worthy of Hong Kong martial madame Michelle Yeoh (a member of this year's Jury...
...last night of shooting for Elia Suleiman's feature film, "Chronicle of Love and Pain." On a quiet street in Sheikh Jarrah, an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, the 40-year-old director's special effects team is having trouble with a Molotov cocktail that's supposed to be thrown in this scene. A group of gawking Palestinian youths offers to help make a good firebomb. "They have experience with this kind of thing," Suleiman says wryly. A 40-year-old from Nazareth, Israel's biggest Arab town, Suleiman takes the gritty realities of life for Israel's 1 million Arab...