Absurd Avatars,Transcultural Relations: Elia Suleiman,Franco-Palestinian Filmmaking and Beyond

This article illuminates the threads of connection drawing together the work of the Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman and French cultural production, while acknowledging the broader international contexts of these connections. The transcultural relations identified in the article title are a means of articulating these concerns. Suleiman's films, funded by French production companies and supported by French film festivals, have a tacit connection to France. Suleiman's mute self-representation within his films also draws upon auteurist and absurdist tropes familiar to European literature and art in the twentieth century. First discussing the broader cultural and geopolitical contexts of Franco-Palestinian filmmaking, the article then engages closely with critical tropes of the Absurd and human gesture in relation both to the critical reception of Suleiman's films, and the films' aesthetics, specifically in his recent feature films Divine Intervention (2002) and Le Temps qu'il reste/The Time that Remains (2009). Offering an alternative articulation of these complex transcultural relationships, the article explores Suleiman's position as a mute filmic figure and auteur director. It re-opens an often ‘unspoken’ dialogue of Franco-Palestinian cinematic relations which has been frequently designated as historical or political, rather than also and in equal measure, cultural, aesthetic, ethical and personal. At the same time, it seeks to open out these dialogues beyond France and Palestine, towards transcultural relations between Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and North America.