Project Description

Lydda Airport is a short film that takes place at the eponymous location sometime in
the mid to late 1930s. Built in 1936 by the British, Lydda Airport was an important
stop along the ‘Empire Route’ for their national airline, Imperial Airways. Until 1939
it was the world’s largest aerodrome. Central to the film’s narrative is Hannibal, one
of the eight planes that made up the Handley Page fleet, the largest passenger planes
in the world at that time. In 1940, Hannibal mysteriously disappeared somewhere over the Gulf of Oman en route to Sharjah. The film was also inspired by Edmond Tamari, a transport company employee from Jaffa, who received a communication that he should take a bouquet of flowers to Lydda Airport and wait for the arrival of Amelia Earhart to welcome her to Palestine. She never arrived. On the 11th of July 1948 Lydda Airport was captured by the Israeli Defense Forces and renamed Lod International Airport. In 1974 the airport was renamed Ben Gurion International Airport.

Courtesy of the artist and Alexander and Bonin, New York. Commissioned by the Pick Laudati Fund for Arts Computing, Northwestern. Additional thanks to Civitella Ranieri.

April 2011