We Began by Measuring Distance

Static images, texts, spoken words and sounds interweave to tell the story of an anonymous group that spends its time measuring distances. These innocent measurements become political, shaping the gaze on the way that image and sound recount history, tragedy and the complexity of Palestinian nationalism. We Began by Measuring Distances explores the ultimate disenchantment that wells up when the visual fails to represent the tragic, as well as the paradox between proximity and distance, and how global events can affect us deeply despite happening far away. 

Shot in Berlin, the film opens on aerial views of Gaza with its buildings reduced to skeletal remains.  

A cold distant voice introduces a game invented by an anonymous group to escape boredom: measuring distances, first between objects, then between the cities hosting peace conferences. Little by little, the narration shifts towards the “virgin forest”, a land still devoid of a human footprint, intertwined with images of Gaza’s threatened ecology.

Inspired by Western situationist and psychogeography cinema, the film challenges the colonial legacy through borders, memory and abstract mapping.

(based on L’artrue.org)