The Time that Separates Us circles an ancient salt-rock formation overlooking the Dead Sea, near Ghor Al-Safi, Jordan. In the process, this Pillar of Salt becomes a portal through which to face the Jordan River Valley, its heavily militarized border and complex infrastructures of tourism, as well as the stigmatized realms of desire, sexuality, and gender encoded within a highly mediated political landscape and its related sites of mythology.

The Time that Separates Us

Lovers’ Wind, takes its starting point from the helicopter crash at Karaj Dam near Tehran that killed French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse in 1970, during the production of Le Vent des Amoureux (Bād-e Sabā, 1978), a state-funded documentary about Iran.

Lovers' Wind

Le vent des amoureux was completed by Lamorisse’s wife and son, and officially released eight years after the filmmaker’s death. Iran’s Ministry of Art and Culture used additional material to create a seven-minute short film intended as a postscript in veneration of both the filmmaker and the Pahlavi regime’s vision of progress. It was a last gasp, released at the dawn of the Iranian Revolution which would see the ultimate downfall of the Pahlavi regime. A decelerated rendition of this short film accompanies an audio interview with an archivist entrusted with preserving the original reels.