Arab Film Fest Collab 2020
We were so thrilled to be invited to the Arab Film Fest Collab to showcase our experimental narrative short "Moonship Dispatch: Al Hakima", a virtual rendition given the pandemic.
Check out the film page on the festival website! You can also watch the full film below! The film was also shown for Day 2 of Electronic Literature Day, where Barakunan duo Jad Atoui and Sarah Huneidi deliver a haunting musical missive written by Dani Arbid. The group has performed together in Beirut Art Center, MMAG Foundation in Amman, and Warehouse421 in Abu Dhabi, and for How to Walk Through a Labyrinth, an online event curated by Kayfa Ta for the Mosaic Rooms festival.
Moonship Dispatch is an audiovisual digital travelogue from a team of cosmic wanderers on the Moonship Ra, which set sail from Earth in the Year 2495 BC, during the reign of Userkaf in the Fifth Dynasty of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. This is an era marked by the growing importance of the cult of the sun god Ra. The Moonship is captained by a group of high priests, nobles, educators, intellectuals, artists, and scientists. Pharaoh Userkaf instructed the Moonship to travel through the cosmos after visitation from ancient astronauts, who landed in Egypt with warnings of a cataclysm that would wipe out all planetary existence. In Dispatch no. 34.BCX.333, one of the researchers onboard, the historian Menazir Al Hakima, delivers a scathing polemic on contemporary civilization, offering historical analyses and evidence that rail against the “supposed exceptionalism of Western civilization [and] the intrepid backwardness of the Arab-Muslim world.” Her critique warns against the coming collapse of the world as we know it, revealing a painful, bleak portrayal of the 21st century.
Taken from Festival website:
The Arab American National Museum (AANM), the Arab Film and Media Institute (AFMI), ArteEast, and Mizna proudly present the Arab Film Fest Collab (AFFC) from December 3 to 13, 2020. The AFFC is a collectively produced virtual film festival, screening independent Arab cinema for audiences across the United States.
With programs featuring films, panel discussions, and performances from Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA), the AFFC highlights Arab, Afro-Arab, and Black SWANA voices, capturing the complexity of the Arabic-speaking world and its diverse narratives. Offering more than 60 short and feature-length films, genres include drama, science fiction, comedy, and documentary. Screening the work of filmmakers from countries like Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, and Morocco, the AFFC exhibits all films in their original languages with English subtitles.