Project Detail

Measures of Distance

Synopsis

Mona Hatoum left Beirut in 1975 for a short visit to London. When war broke out in the Lebanon she found it impossible to return. In this video, letters from her mother in Beirut, written in Arabic, move across the screen. They are read aloud, in English, by the artist. Hatoum's mother is also heard, speaking openly about her feelings and sexuality, accompanied by images of her in the shower.

Hatoum's video suggests exile and displacement. She has said it also challenges 'the stereotype of Arab women as passive, mother as non-sexual being'.

Details

Year: 1988
Type of project: Shorts
Running time: 16 mins
Director: Mona Hatoum
Producer: Mona Hatoum
Screenwriter: Mona Hatoum
Sound: Iain Macanulty

Genre

Experimental Woman Director

Production Status

Complete

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

Suggest amendments

MODUPE is an experimental documentary that unfolds as a ceremony of queer belonging, inheritance, and sound. At its heart is a dialogue with Afro-Cuban priestess and musician Amelia Pedroso, whose legacy is invoked through archival traces, letters, and performance. Narrated as a letter to an ancestor, the film situates the search for connection within an interior, oceanic dreamscape where water, memory, and ritual become both setting and subject. Cinematically, MODUPE moves between a stylised ensemble rehearsal and a sacred library-archive. The ensemble of voice, drum, and dance provides the film’s pulse, collapsing rehearsal and ritual into one. Deep blue light, reflective surfaces, and submerged imagery create a sensorial architecture that is both intimate and expansive, with water presence throughout evoking both flood and transformation. Formally, the film resists linear storytelling, privileging atmosphere, rhythm, and sonic immersion. Objects, archives, and sacred materials hold the same cinematic weight as bodies in performance, reframing the archive as altar and sound as shrine. Narrative unfolds through resonance rather than resolution, drawing the viewer into a space of listening and reflection. MODUPE proposes cinema as a vessel for inheritance, where identity is fluid, memory is alive and liberation is lived through sound.

Biography Black Dance Experimental LGBTQIA+

notebook

Director: Peter Todd

Year: 2025

Thoughts in a notebook as a string of images. Made to celebrate Close-Up cinema, London. Premiere. Close-Up Year 20. 6.7.2025. Close-Up Cinema, London.

Experimental

Dance Artist Chris Fonseca centre of the image walking along a path in a garden.

Anthos

Director: Nicole Vivien Watson

Year: 2024

Surface Area Dance Theatre in partnership with Harewood House, presents ‘ANTHOS, a dance-for-camera, featuring multidisciplinary artist Chris Fonseca performing with the sculpture ‘Adam’ by Sir Jacob Epstein, 1938-9, in the breathtaking Himalayan Garden. This film includes subtitles and captions.

Climate / Environment Dance Music Woman Director