A forgotten episode in the great 'space race' of the 1960s between the United States and the Soviet Union has been uncovered again in 'The Lebanese Rocket Society', a serious film with a cheerful tone, which, starting from scratch and an almost archeological thoroughness, pieces together the story of what actually happened when the dream of a Lebanese flag on the moon burst - and how it happened. The artist duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige take us back to the university in Beirut in 1961, where a group of mathematicians, physicists and engineers first founded the company that has given this film its title. Helped along by their eager students, they started to build rockets, which soon came all sorts of things to all people. Was the Lebanese rocket project a reflection of the new Arab world's modernity and independence? Or did it spring simply from a curiosity to conquer outer space? New interviews and old photographs, archive footage and newspaper cuttings speak for themselves, albeit in an ambiguous way, but all end with the fatal war against Israel in 1967. At the same time, Hadjithomas and Joreige start building a sculpture in the shape of the first Lebanese rocket as a memorial to the ideals that for a while were set back with the Lebanese rocket company's demise.

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