Chronicle of a Lost Civilization

1996 Venice Film Festival Luigi De Laurentiis Award 1997 Seattle International Film Festival New Director Award Introduction: This seemingly simple and documentary-style film depicts the personal journey of the Palestinian patriotic filmmaker Elia Suleiman to find her roots. The video is divided into two parts. The first part records the absurd and silent Arab area in the ancient city of Nazareth. The second part observes the city from a relatively political perspective, in which Elia Suleiman plays a more active role. He came to his birthplace in search of inspiration, but what he saw were miserable pictures of Arab people trapped in a cultural identity crisis. The most striking example: an Arab girl wanted to gain a more independent status than traditional women in her town, but was unable to do so because of the prejudices of the residents living in the Jewish ghetto.