Elia Suleiman - Quotes

Multiplying the possibilities of reading my images gives me pleasure. As much as possible, I try to layer them. It's a democratization of the image. Just as we have never arrived at a better political system than what we call democracy today, my images carry exactly the same risk as democracy. I'm taking the risk that some of them can be misread, but I can't impose my own views.
Suleiman, Elia.

The relationship between the moment of truth that you capture and the moment of truth that the spectator captures is incredible. This is what I consider the godliness of communication. I still don't fully understand and I prefer not to analyse it, the notion that given that we are not living in any form of uniformity how is it that between Palestine, Norway and the United States people are laughing at exactly the same moment in the film?
Suleiman, Elia.

Yet these filmmakers have been boycotted, ordered away, deserted as people of the plague because they happen to carry the Israeli identity.
Suleiman, Elia. "Open Letter." in: Slash Seconds. Vol. 1, No. 4, No Date. (English).

...in the quest for truth and justice ... It is a quest coated inside out with the pleasures and pains which extend and communicate our individual humanity with the rest of humanity. Isn't that after all what art is all about?
Suleiman, Elia. "Open Letter." in: Slash Seconds. Vol. 1, No. 4, No Date. (English).

The relationship between the moment of truth that you capture and the moment of truth that the spectator captures is incredible. This is what I consider the godliness of communication.
Suleiman, Elia and Jason Wood (Interviewer). "A Quick Chat with Elia Suleiman." in: Kamera.co.uk. No Date. (English).

Lately I feel like I am beginning to understand at least that in order to make a good image it means to better myself, I need to feel good, generous and loving to myself to release this to others. I must not shy away from these values and so I am going to rely on that for the meantime. I have perhaps resisted slogans such as 'make love not war' but I am now considering redefining the term because I feel it is worthwhile.
Suleiman, Elia and Jason Wood (Interviewer). "A Quick Chat with Elia Suleiman." in: Kamera.co.uk. No Date. (English).

I think that the spectator associates with a universal image in a self-reflexive fashion and participates with it. I think I attempt a kind of democratic reading and I want the spectator to react and feel according to his or her own emotions.
Suleiman, Elia and Jason Wood (Interviewer). "A Quick Chat with Elia Suleiman." in: Kamera.co.uk. No Date. (English).

I am not asking people to empathise with anything; this is not a demand or a desire. The first thing for the spectator to do is have pleasure. The fact that they go and aestheticise a life beyond the film is for me an expression of support for the Palestinian people.
Suleiman, Elia and Jason Wood (Interviewer). "A Quick Chat with Elia Suleiman." in: Kamera.co.uk. No Date. (English).

The film is not directly talking about Palestine, it is talking about that which imposes itself to negate and capture and protest love. Spectators relate to it because we all want freedom to eat sleep, make love and live better without imposition.
Suleiman, Elia and Jason Wood (Interviewer). "A Quick Chat with Elia Suleiman." in: Kamera.co.uk. No Date. (English).

I love to laugh at my own jokes, luckily some other people laugh at them too.
Suleiman, Elia and Jason Wood (Interviewer). "A Quick Chat with Elia Suleiman." in: Kamera.co.uk. No Date. (English).

Historically, there is something resistant about humour and even if talking in terms of a wider discussion of just my film, when people live for instance in a ghetto and when they produce black humour, I think this is a way to deter finality in some respects and a way of producing hope. I think humour can be a poetic sight with a poetic dimension and this is something that cannot be captured by the dominant order.
Suleiman, Elia and Jason Wood (Interviewer). "A Quick Chat with Elia Suleiman." in: Kamera.co.uk. No Date. (English).

I work very hard, sometimes in utter euphoria and sometimes in angst trying to add multiple layers to the frame and the tableau until a moment when I feel that it pigments and matures.
Suleiman, Elia and Jason Wood (Interviewer). "A Quick Chat with Elia Suleiman." in: Kamera.co.uk. No Date. (English).

Sound and music are parallel to image as far as I am concerned. I use it for the humour and there is a second degree use of kitsch music. But I had a sense of the type of music I wanted often before I shot particular scenes which is why there is no original soundtrack because I like to compose or re-compose the songs of others myself. I detest film-makers who bring music because of their insecurity concerning the image; I prefer to have it as a parallel track. Sometimes telling its very own story. I also think that sound is so vital in the telling of the story.
Suleiman, Elia and Jason Wood (Interviewer). "A Quick Chat with Elia Suleiman." in: Kamera.co.uk. No Date. (English).

I don't have authority over time. I can say that it's a warning sign about a certain feel of the experience that we, whoever we are, might be living. The Time That Remains is a sense of my feeling, I feel it might be the feelings of others -- it's a warning sign regarding a global situation.
Suleiman, Elia and Sabah Haider (Interviewer). "A different kind of occupation: an interview with Elia Suleiman." in: The Electronic Intifada. February 1, 2010. (English).

In my opinion I think that this microcosm is everywhere, so I don't know if the microcosm of the Arab-Israeli conflict is a reflection of the world, or if the world is a microcosm of Palestine.
Suleiman, Elia and Sabah Haider (Interviewer). "A different kind of occupation: an interview with Elia Suleiman." in: The Electronic Intifada. February 1, 2010. (English).

There is a microcosm everywhere of every conflict, every centimeter that we are now traveling. I do not believe that there is one microcosm to reflect the world, because every place in the world has become a microcosm of its own conflict.
Suleiman, Elia and Sabah Haider (Interviewer). "A different kind of occupation: an interview with Elia Suleiman." in: The Electronic Intifada. February 1, 2010. (English).

I only reflect and sponge and experience, and that happens to be as a Palestinian Diasporic -- or everyday reality. An occupation of some sorts. A different kind of an occupation. An occupation of the geography of Palestine, and an occupation of the souls of those who live there.
Suleiman, Elia and Sabah Haider (Interviewer). "A different kind of occupation: an interview with Elia Suleiman." in: The Electronic Intifada. February 1, 2010. (English).

Look, when you are an artist, you should have faith that first of all your experience is not local; it is a universal experience. That's one. When you compose an image you should never think about the boundaries of that image. But should this image exist in one locale, it should transgress the boundaries of that locale.
Suleiman, Elia and Sabah Haider (Interviewer). "A different kind of occupation: an interview with Elia Suleiman." in: The Electronic Intifada. February 1, 2010. (English).

If they took pleasure when watching the film, and went home and had a kind of positivity or an intuition or desire to aestheticize their dinner table, they have, as far as I'm concerned, went a step further to becoming pro-Palestinian. I will not even believe that if they went and started to demonstrate, that this would be an achievement for me. I think each individual, when they watch a film of mine, that when it will be flattering me is when they have certain impulses of a positive construction, of a better life of their own. As individuals, and as communities, and that is for me then, a pro-Palestinian experience.
Suleiman, Elia and Sabah Haider (Interviewer). "A different kind of occupation: an interview with Elia Suleiman." in: The Electronic Intifada. February 1, 2010. (English).

Why do we have to run after what is by de facto part of our culture -- food or embroidery or kuffiyehs -- and why do we have to overemphasize dancingdabke as if this symbolizes that the land is ours, but simply beating it? I do not believe in those things. If there was to be any such thing as a national identity with an identification of that, I think then I would say it has to be so elastic it would never have to be within any static borders.
Suleiman, Elia and Sabah Haider (Interviewer). "A different kind of occupation: an interview with Elia Suleiman." in: The Electronic Intifada. February 1, 2010. (English).

The Time That Remains is a kind of warning about the regression of thestatus quo, or the regression of the state of things. You warn because there is hope.
Suleiman, Elia and Sabah Haider (Interviewer). "A different kind of occupation: an interview with Elia Suleiman." in: The Electronic Intifada. February 1, 2010. (English).

What's political and not political? I don't think we live a moment in our lives that's not political. If you want to be conscious of the world, you must acquire some knowledge of everything in everyday life -- whether an object, a product or a thought. We should never take anything we're told for granted.
Suleiman, Elia. "Making Art in a World Without Justice." in: Daily Star. December 5, 2009. (English).

Everything is political. It's just that in certain cases the representation varies.
Suleiman, Elia. "Making Art in a World Without Justice." in: Daily Star. December 5, 2009. (English).

But ambivalence is a good place to stand regarding the term 'resistance' because it may have lost its meaning from overuse.
Suleiman, Elia. "Making Art in a World Without Justice." in: Daily Star. December 5, 2009. (English).

Resistance should never be an institution. It should never be used in a tribal fashion because, when it becomes tribal, resistance starts to [generate] a binary opposition that excludes, attacks and antagonises another tribe.
Suleiman, Elia. "Making Art in a World Without Justice." in: Daily Star. December 5, 2009. (English).

I think 'resistance' is a touching, even tender, word because it's trying to deter what is already in our living rooms.
Suleiman, Elia. "Making Art in a World Without Justice." in: Daily Star. December 5, 2009. (English).

If you ghettoize yourself in this or that just cause, you can be exploited and abused by those who want to keep you within that ghetto ... I hope that when you come and see my work you don't come and tell me this is 'the Palestinian experience.' Everybody ages. There are many expulsions, many exiles in the world. We should have heart for all of them. Maybe the Palestinian case is special but there are many special tragedies in this world. It does no good to our humanity to think otherwise.
Suleiman, Elia. "Making Art in a World Without Justice." in: Daily Star. December 5, 2009. (English).

I'm not a sell-out to any power structure but I don't feel that one has to stand static as a critic ... To say 'They are this' or 'They are that' is to put yourself into a sort of a ghetto.
Suleiman, Elia. "Making Art in a World Without Justice." in: Daily Star. December 5, 2009. (English).

I can say I will never play into anybody's hands [because that would] kill my work.
Suleiman, Elia. "Making Art in a World Without Justice." in: Daily Star. December 5, 2009. (English).

I was around my mid-20s and had acquired the habit of knocking on doors that did not open to the point where it had become almost an end in itself – a motor for energising a conviction that I was not really convinced of: the desire to make films.
Suleiman, Elia. "The Postponed Drama of Return." in: Open Democracy. October 27, 2003. (English).

And why should any door open? I had no film education, no formal education at all. I barely knew how or what the stuff of film was all about. In short, I had nothing to show for except the synopsis of a film that – I think I knew at the time – I was never going to make. So I carried the synopsis and went off.
Suleiman, Elia. "The Postponed Drama of Return." in: Open Democracy. October 27, 2003. (English).

There was a will to link but one that lacked definition of any reciprocity or common ground. I think he took, or wanted to take, to my liking but without knowing why or how. I, in turn, wanted to impress him, so I was always looking for something smart to say. I was always intimidated. It never worked.
Suleiman, Elia. "The Postponed Drama of Return." in: Open Democracy. October 27, 2003. (English).

Because I am a stuttered reader lacking, by birth or upbringing, the necessary concentration to follow through or comprehend narratives, I consider myself an unprivileged privileged reader. I picked at the poetic veneer of a Said text like a woodpecker on wood, cracking and knocking out fragments, knitting them according to my own sense of specialness and pleasure.
Suleiman, Elia. "The Postponed Drama of Return." in: Open Democracy. October 27, 2003. (English).

Cinema is inept also in that it cannot keep up with the devaluation of time and the shrinking of space. The very industrial revolution that gave rise to cinema is destroying both.
Suleiman, Elia. "The Postponed Drama of Return." in: Open Democracy. October 27, 2003. (English).

The camera was born as a tool for war, but it could never be used as a gun in the way the revolutionaries intended it to. Poetic resistance, it advances but in circular motion, unsynchronised with the present, with no immediacy. I have faith that cinema is with ‘us’ but only in the long run.
Suleiman, Elia. "The Postponed Drama of Return." in: Open Democracy. October 27, 2003. (English).

Yet, every so often, I grow impatient. Hope fails me and I lose my faith.
Suleiman, Elia. "The Postponed Drama of Return." in: Open Democracy. October 27, 2003. (English).

Said’s passion was justice and he wanted it now. Cinema can have love and often at first sight. But justice is something cinema cannot frame. It is always outside the frame.
Suleiman, Elia. "The Postponed Drama of Return." in: Open Democracy. October 27, 2003. (English).

I ran to Jerusalem. I wasn't born in Jerusalem, but I'd lived here, and it was familiar. And the idea of coming here seemed quite romantic. I wanted a garden with an olive tree, and I wanted to sit and drink coffee outside. The comfort of a home, however, is hard to sustain. I do seem to live in a place for a certain amount of time and then start thinking that home is somewhere else. So this kind of nomadic life seems to be inevitable for me now... What disappointed me was that somehow, as I dug into my sense of belonging here, I did lose that sense of rootedness.
Suleiman, Elia and Coco Fusco (Interviewer). "Coco Fusco talks with director Elia Suleiman about Chronicle of Disappearance." in: Filmmaker: The Magazine of Independent Film. Summer 1997. (English).

On one level I do want to belong, on the other hand I'm totally amazed by someone who wants to raise the question about belonging. Obviously, I remain ambivalent.
Suleiman, Elia and Coco Fusco (Interviewer). "Coco Fusco talks with director Elia Suleiman about Chronicle of Disappearance." in: Filmmaker: The Magazine of Independent Film. Summer 1997. (English).

I don't think there's anything correct in politics, but I think any political proposition that carries, let's say, moral values, will never be a political proposal that will have the answer to anything. What you can do is hint.
Suleiman, Elia and Coco Fusco (Interviewer). "Coco Fusco talks with director Elia Suleiman about Chronicle of Disappearance." in: Filmmaker: The Magazine of Independent Film. Summer 1997. (English).