Moonscape is a short film that takes the form of a music video for a ballad/middle-of-the-road song, performed as a duet between a male and female singer, in Arabic. The song traces the story of a man called Dennis M. Hope, who claimed ownership of the Moon in 1980 and thus founded the Lunar Embassy – a company that sells land on a variety of planets and Moons, and makes a connection between his story and that of the director's – a young Palestinian woman living under the Israeli occupation, longing to end the misery of her people in any way possible.

The visuals of the film are a hybrid of surrealist scenes from the Arab music industry, reenacted by the artist’s parents who also play the roles of the singers in the film, and film noir; in addition to founding footage from the NASA archives, references from canonic films which influenced the art world and show representations of the Moon, and screenshots of Email correspondences with staff members of the Lunar Embassy. All in order to explore the relationship between hope, nostalgia, and despair.

Mona Benyamin is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Haifa. In her works, she explores intergenerational outlooks on hope, trauma and questions of identity, using humor and irony as political tools of resistance and reflection. Her recent works have been screened — among others — at MoMA, Another Gaze, Sheffield DocFest and Columbia University.

2020 | 17 min
Arabic with English subtitles