Title: Between a Postcolonial Nation and Fantasies of the Feminine: The Contested Visions of Palestinian Cinema
Abstract: One of the many astonishing traits of Palestinian cinema is the way in which it has embraced the complex relationship between gender and nation as a central concern in its filmmaking. This article explores the ways in which gendered and national identity are negotiated and refigured in two seminal contributions to Palestinian cinema, Michel Khleifi's Wedding in Galilee and Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention. Paying close attention to the contested structures of nation, postcoloniality, gender, and identification within the films, the article examines the extent to which Khleifi and Suleiman manage to reconcile postcolonial and feminist commitments in visual terms. In particular, the article examines the directors' visual construction of space, division, and connection, which it argues can be interpreted as a codification of the paradigms of gender, desire, and fantasy present within the films.