Theatr Mwldan Film Society’s film of choice on Sunday 3rd and Monday 4th October is The Time that Remains (15). Elia Suleiman’s beautiful, unique, and deeply personal depiction of Palestine since 1948, has been described as “a minor masterpiece”. The Arab-Israeli director has based the film around the lives of his own family, inspired by his father’s private diaries – starting from when he was a resistance fighter in 1948 – and by his mother’s letters to family members who were forced to leave the country.
Combined with Elia’s intimate memories of them and with them, the film attempts to portray the daily life of those Palestinians who remained and were labelled “Israeli-Arabs”, living as a minority in their own homeland.
Born in Nazareth in 1960 to Arab parents, Elia Suleiman studied cinema in New York and made his first short films there in the 1980s, before settling in Jerusalem in 1994. His first feature film, Chronicle of a Disappearance, won the Best First Film Prize at the 1996 Venice Film Festival. In 2002, Divine Intervention won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival as well as the Best Foreign Film Prize at the European Awards in Rome.
Often compared to Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, Elia Suleiman handles burlesque and sobriety with the same poetic sense. The Time That Remains is humanist cinema at its finest, the gentleness of its cynicism and the curbing of rancour are remarkable.
See The Time That Remains (15) at Theatr Mwldan on Sunday 3 (6.00pm) and Monday 4 (8.35pm) October. To book, call Theatr Mwldan’s Box Office on 01239 621200 or visit www.mwldan.co.uk.
