Measures of Distance
1988 · 15m · UK
Directed by Mona Hatoum
Genres: documentary, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A layered video essay in which Mona Hatoum reads her Palestinian mother's letters from Beirut over intimate images of her mother showering, overlaid with Arabic script — weaving themes of exile, displacement, and the bond between mother and daughter separated by the Lebanese Civil War.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Hatoum reading her mother's Beirut letters over shower photos with Arabic script as the visual barrier — three registers layered with surgical clarity. Heavy in the right places.
Hatoum's triple-register letter-and-shower piece is one of the foundational works of diasporic video art, and its layering of script-as-screen has been widely inherited. Vimeo gates it for home rental.
Three registers layered at once - shower photos, Arabic letters as visual screen, voiceover translation - so the act of reading mother-to-daughter becomes the film's spatial geometry. Vimeo confirms 15 minutes home-rental availability.
Reviews
Perhaps the most touching of Mona Hatoum's artistic statements, in which she examines her position as an exiled female artist — stunning in its intimacy and a profoundly moving work to behold.
Speaks of the complexities of exile, displacement, the sense of loss and separation caused by war, creating a dual narrative of an emotional relationship between mother and daughter and their experiences of exile.
Festivals
- London Film Festival
- AFI National Video Festival
- Montreal Women's Film and Video Festival
- Toronto Palestine Film Festival 2009
- Festival des 3 Continents