Chronicle of a Disappearance

In a series of filmed diary entries, Palestinian moviemaker Elia Suleiman records his return home after a self-imposed exile in New York. Captured by a camera that hardly seems to move except when cutting from shot to violent shot, Chronicle voyeuristically looks at how little has changed in Suleiman's absence. But as the documentary slides into a strange fantasy of a Palestinian agitator who wreaks havoc on the Jerusalem police with a walkie-talkie, the stilted life of the Palestinian village begins to take shape. It is a place where the elders fall asleep on their couches while the Israeli national anthem blares dramatically on the TV; where conversation is seldom and idle; and where holy water is bottled and sold at a souvenir shop that has no customers. Suleiman traces the erasure of such places from Western and Israeli political discourse as he goes back to a home that has already been made an artifact.Nicholson Hall, Sunday at 5:30 p.m.