Long still frames, text, language, and sound weave the story of an anonymous group who spend their time measuring distance. Innocent measurements gradually become political, revealing how image and sound communicate history. We Began by Measuring Distance confronts a final disillusionment with facts when images fail to convey tragedy.

 

One of Basma al-Sharif’s major early works, We Began by Measuring Distance questions the very ways in which we understand and classify the world through the act of measurement. Space reduced to coordinates and numbers on a map gradually expands, through repeated actions and accumulated images, into questions of memory, history, and power rather than mere physical distance.
What first appears to be an objective act of recording slowly becomes a political gesture. Measuring distance ultimately leads to the question of what we call near and what we call far. Through text, language, and sound, al-Sharif challenges the belief that images can transparently convey reality.
If representation is impossible, what can we do instead? We Began by Measuring Distance offers a sensory and inventive response. Measurement and recording cease to be processes for accumulating objective information and become performances that reveal the perspectives through which we approach memory and history.

• Screenplay Basma al-SHARIF
• Edit Basma al-SHARIF

Basma al-SHARIF | Basma al-SHARIF | basmalsharif@gmail.com