LiminalSpaces

Suleiman Mansour
The Last Days of the World Cup in Me’elia
Located in northern Israel, Me’elia is a village whose 2000 inhabitants are
all Roman Catholics. No Muslims, Jews, or even Orthodox or Protestant
Christians are welcome there. The inhabitants of Me’elia look down upon
neighboring Muslim and Druze villages, and dislike Jews because of their
condescending attitude and because of problems with the tax authorities
and other governmental institutions. As a result, the inhabitants of Me’elia
identify themselves with neither the Palestinian people nor with Israeli
Jews. The village, which is made up of small-business owners and
contractors who work with Israeli institutions, is economically well-off. It
is home to a wealthy and lost community searching, like any other
community, for something to belong to.

During the World Cup, this yearning to belong becomes clearly evident.
Every house in the village waves at least one ? and in some cases four, five
or as many as eight ? national flags. Brazil, Italy, Germany, Argentina,
Costa Rica and France are all represented by flags stretched high above
the streets. Middle Eastern, North African or East Asian flags are
noticeably absent… During the month of the World Cup, no marriages
take place in Me’elia. A curfew-like status is imposed in the streets,
especially whenever there is an important game taking place. The film
attempts to document the last week of the Mondial in that village to
expose this surreal reality, this new alien-like sense of belonging, within
the complex political region it is set in.

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Suliman Mansour
Suliman Mansour is a leading Palestinian artist. He is the co-founder and
director of the Wasiti Art Center in Jerusalem. Since 1975, his work has
been exhibited in Palestine, Israel, the US, Japan, Korea and many other
Arab and European countries. He was head of the League of Palestinian
Artists for four years. He also participated in the French Palestinian
spring exhibit at the Paris Institut du Monde Arabe in 1997. He won the
Nile Award at the 1998 Cairo Biennial for his series of clay panels “I am
Ismail”, and the Palestine Prize for the Visual Arts in 1998.
alwasiti@palnet.com