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Moon Cinema is just a slice of what Tour de Moon is working towards with its platform, but it's an important one. Founded by Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun, who is also the founder and director of the International Space Orchestra and the tuition-free University of the Underground, this brand new festival aims to bring together youths to question the state of our world, and the way we all live. After all, we're living in a world where history is, unfortunately, repeating itself, and we're continually facing the effects of climate change, war, various injustices, and economic insecurity. So Tour de Moon is asking creators to invent their own alternative futures that imagine what another world could be like.
Centering around the idea that the Moon could be our "blank canvas where anything is possible", Tour de Moon incorporates creativity across many spectrums and forms from publishing to therapy, and games to music. But, Moon Cinema is specifically about using the medium of film to explore new ideas and possibilities.
Chosen by Tour de Moon's team along with help from its Youth Reporter Board and Advisory Board as part of an international competition, Moon Cinema's showcase includes a collection of 16 original short films. Each one has been selected because they provoke thoughts on youth countercultures, science, social injustice, and equality, through the voices of 18-25 year-olds encouraged to create a powerful collection of non-linear films.
The film collection includes a huge range of topics from creators from all over the UK and beyond, addressing crises like deforestation and human displacement, ideas on universal femaleness, issues around sexual identities, and themes of Blackness and African spirituality. Miles, for example, probes the idea of how the carbon remains of Moon Inhabitants could sustain a lush forest in their film Moonmoss, while Earthbodys from Mirrored Fatalities tackles the idea of people being taken from their ancestral lands and pushed into cities where health and economic problems are rife.
There are also explorations of various scientific topics too, ranging from investigating the power and influence the moon has on our lives in Rizq Yazed's Moonphase, to Dian Joy's Lamp which, in part, explores the origins of the term 'computer bug'.
You can catch Moon Cinema as part of Tour de Moon, which is coming to Southampton between June 10 - 13. You can buy tickets right here.
Tour de Moon is one of 10 major creative projects commissioned as part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, which is taking place across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in 2022.
