Tuesday, January 14 & January 27, 7:30 PM, 124 S 3rd St, Brooklyn, NY

Film Screening: THE TIME THAT REMAINS

The Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn is mounting two special screenings of Elia Suleiman’s semi-autobiographical film The Time That Remains (2009) on January 14 and 27. The film is, per the director’s own words, “a family portrait and a social portrait” of Palestinian life in the decades following the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

The Time That Remains casually mounts its drama as a succession of anecdotes which gather into gently traced narrative strands that detail the history of a family and their neighbors living through the second half of a century of tumult. Suleiman, who appears, wordlessly, in the latter half of the film, has often seen his films compared to those of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton. The comparisons are apt, as his mild-mannered presence, ordered mise-en-scene, and laconic realism pull forth the blackly-comic absurdity of life under occupation.

Suleiman has referred to his presence in the film as a sort of “wingless angel” offering a neutralized gaze, but this is not to say the film is without deep currents of melancholy or anger. These feelings are profoundly present, evinced through the exhausting accumulation of injustice and violence, staged upon a landscape of such striking beauty that it can be difficult to imagine it could sustain such suffering.

Find out more and reserve your tickets here.