Michel Khleifi: “Belgium occupies a central place in Palestinian cinema”

Belgian Tim Mielants opens the Berlinale with “little things that matter”…

A year after October 7 and while Israel continues more than ever its warlike policy against the Palestinians and now Lebanon, this price obviously takes on a political dimension. “It’s wonderful that there is a kind of courage. What we lack right now is the courage to tell the truth, or at least think about the truth.”the Palestinian filmmaker told us Tuesday morning.

Michel Khleifi, however, does not intend to transform this prize into a platform to defend the Palestinian cause. “I will simply keep the thanks in order… You know, I discovered that I am part of a people of animals. Perhaps it will be noticed that an animal can have a few sympathetic words compared to those who decide who is an animal and who is not.he explains with a smile, in reference to the words of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant who, on October 9, 2023, declared that the Palestinians were “human animals”…

Behind the cinema screen

Born in Nazareth into an Arab family in 1950, Michel Khleifi arrived in Wavre in 1970, telling his family that after working in a garage in his hometown, he was leaving to become a mechanic for Volkswagen. The 19-year-old knows nothing about Belgium, except Paul Van Himst and Paul-Henri Spaak, whom he heard about on the radio…

Cillian Murphy at the opening of the 51st Ghent Festival

It was ultimately at Insas that Michel Khleifi studied, graduating in theater, radio and television in 1977. His first passion was in fact theater, which he practiced in Nazareth. His first memories of cinema date back to his poor childhood, when he took refuge with his friends behind the screen to listen to films, not being able to afford a ticket to enter the theater. “Like all the poor children of the region, I knew Indian cinema, Egyptian cinema, cowboy or Maciste films… The first time I started to think differently about cinema was when I I saw, at 14-15 years old, America, America by Elia Kazan. I come from a family of Orthodox Christians. We are close to Greece. And I recognized myself in the description he gave of this family… I recognized certain emotions that I myself had felt, particularly during my sister’s wedding.”remembers the director.

The first Palestinian filmmaker

In parallel with his work at RTBF, Khleifi launched into cinema, becoming the first Palestinian to shoot a film in the West Bank without money: Fertile Memory. Filming the daily life and feelings of Palestinians (notably his own aunt and the writer Sahar Khalifeh), this documentary evoking questions that are still cruelly topical, launched his career at Cannes in 1981, where he should have received the Camera d gold for best first film.

Festival delegate Gilles Jacob had in fact called the young director back to collect his prize, already busy hitchhiking back to Brussels. But while he was popping champagne with Volker Schlöndorff and Jerzy Skolimowski, it was not his name that was called during the closing ceremony… Khleifi claims that the jury, then made up of film critics, had received enormous pressure to change his vote – notably from American directors, who allegedly threatened to withdraw from the festival…

The “Wedding in Galilee” shock

Khleifi says it was also pressures that prevented his first fiction film, Wedding in Galileeto be selected in Competition at Cannes in 1987, where it was finally presented at the Directors’ Fortnight. Describing with finesse and sensuality a Palestinian wedding in occupied territory, the film nevertheless won the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Festival a few months later.

How to film in the Palestinian territories?

On his transition to fiction with Wedding in GalileeMichel Khleifi does not understand the strict border between genres. “I deeply believe that there is no difference between reality and fiction. The most important thing is that cinema is an extraordinary invention. When I was making Fertile MemoryI thought of it in terms of fiction, integrating elements that have nothing to do with the documentary. It was a novelty. And when I did Wedding in GalileeI held on to the truth of reality. I don’t like artificial cinema, where there is a code between the screen and the spectator. I like to propel the viewer into a reality, so that they get lost in it.”reflects the filmmaker.

With the exception of The Agenda (adaptation of the first homonymous novel by Jean-Luc Outers in 1993), Michel Khleifi’s entire filmography will have been focused on Palestine. “Until today, I am accused of being a political filmmaker. I have the honor of being one. But honestly, in my film project, what interests me is simply the experience Palestinian human. And how we translate it into cinema.”

The power of optimism

Without being an idealistic film – the film tackles the question of the Israeli occupation head-on -, Wedding in Galilee highlights a possibility of fraternization between Palestinians and Israelis. This will also be the subject of the documentary Mixed marriages in the Holy Land in 1996. “Eisenstein said that whoever wants can find all the complexity of the world in a drop of dew. If a drop of dew can teach me to explore peace in this world, I am interested. We must not lose hope. The problem , how do we get out of our fears when we are at war, all blows are allowed, all lies and propaganda? […] We terrorize intellectuals. People tell me that they are afraid to write on the subject, afraid of being called anti-Semitic, as is said of me…”

Despite the horror in which the Palestinians have been living for a year, Michel Khleifi wants to continue to believe in a peaceful solution, in a possible coexistence of Jewish, Muslim and Christian populations in the region. “We are committed to the law. As democrats, of which I am a part, we must be intractable. I am against violence. I am radically pacifist. These are historical circles. We cannot not be optimistic. We must to think that we are going to get out of this cycle. There is a writer from Nazareth who talks about this. He says: in the Palestinian camps, you cannot be optimistic, because you see the reality… But when you are in the. pessimistic reality, you tell yourself that you have to get out of it. He coined a word, saying that we are ‘opsimists’ Despite what they say about us, we are human…”pleads the filmmaker. Who believes that, for 30 years, things have nevertheless been evolving in the right direction.

Khleifi cites as an example a scene from Wedding in Galilee where an old Palestinian prevents young people from throwing molotov cocktails at the Israeli soldiers present at the wedding, urging them to think about the consequences of their action. “At the time, some accused me of being a traitor. This is no longer the case today”explains the filmmaker, returning from a tour to present the film in Türkiye and Egypt.

The importance of Belgium

Michel Khleifi has been based in Brussels for 54 years. If his soul is always viscerally Palestinian, he is also a major figure in Belgian cinema. “Belgium occupies a central place in Palestinian cinema. Because it is thanks to Belgian cinema, to its schools, that I emerged and that I was able to found this Palestinian cinema. The first 15 years, I was all alone. And I received all possible insults, sometimes very hurtful…” This was still the case at the time of his documentary Route 181: fragments of a trip to Palestine-Israelco-directed with the Israeli Eyal Sivan and which caused controversy in March 2004 during its programming at the Cinéma du Réel festival at the Center Pompidou.

Khleifi does not regret this choice of remaining in Belgium. “I had several offers in the United States. I taught at Columbia University in New York. But I said to myself: there, I will be American, I will lose my soul. Like most of the original directors European who went there. American cinema is a powerful, rich, magnificent cinema. But its codes are American. And the economic and financial approach is very well maintained by the Empire. I remember, when I was at Insas, that Jean-Claude Batz, our production professor, told us that there were 10 industries in the United States for which, if they were in danger, we could declare a At the time, cinema was the seventh. Today, it’s almost the third…. But I’m happy and proud to have stayed in Belgium!”

• Published in 2019 on the occasion of the retrospective devoted to the filmmaker at Cinematek, “Michel Khleifi – Mémoire Fertile” compiles a series of texts devoted to the filmmaker, published between 1981 and 2019. Ed. Cinematek/Courtisane. 132 pp., €12.

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Filmography: Michel Khleifi

• Fertile Memory (1980), documentary. Presented at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes.
• Ma’loul celebrates his destruction (1985), short documentary film.
• Wedding in Galilee (1987), with Bushra Qaraman, Makram Khouri, Juliano Meir-Khamis. Presented at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, Coquille d’or in San Sebastian. André-Cavens Prize of the UCC and Humanum Prize of the UPCB
• Song of Stones (1990), documentary, presented at Un certain regard in Cannes
• The Agenda (1993), with Robin Renucci, Michael Lonsdale, Marianne Basler.
• Mixed marriages in the Holy Land (1996), documentary.
• The Tale of the Three Diamonds (1996), presented at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes.
• Escape to Paradise (1998), theatrical show.
• Route 181: fragments of a trip to Palestine-Israel (2003), documentary co-directed with Eyal Sivan
• Zindeeq (1993), with Mira Awad, Mohammed Bakri.