Qamri Hajer (My Moon Migrated)

Qamri Hajer (My Moon Migrated)

[12 minutes, 2009]

This short film of 35mm camera stills and my own sound design recollects a recitation of an imagined long-ago, though prescient, film (inspired in part by Chris Marker’s La Jetee). Shot entirely in Damascus, Syria, in Summer 2008 while I was studying Arabic, the film now conveys a long-ago Damascus, prior to the Arab revolutions and current situation in Syria. I recite the poem, “An Arab Traveler in Space” by Syrian poet Mohamed al-Maghut (d. 2006). The title of the poem comes from “Rita and the Rifle” by Mahmoud Darwish (d. 2008). The film brings together my interest in landscape and people’s politics and histories, but also matters of language, translation, and the uncanny of accented tongues.