Memory as Inheritance: North African Jewish Heritage Through Documentary Film

October 03, 2024

Memory as Inheritance: North African Jewish Heritage Through Documentary Film

Episode 189

Memory as Inheritance: North African Jewish Heritage Through Documentary Film

In this podcast, Margaux Fitoussi and Cléo Cohen discuss two of their films, El Hara (2017) and Que Dieu te protège/Rabbi Maak (2021), respectively. Each film asks questions about senses of home, heritage, memory, and displacement among Jewish North Africans. In the interview, Fitoussi and Cohen, who both come from North African Jewish families, discuss their personal relationships with their Jewish, Arab, French, and American identities. Albert Memmi, a prominent Tunisian Jewish author, influenced both filmmakers, as his writings articulate the complexity of Jewish North African identity in relation to class, colonialism, postcoloniality, ambivalence, and exile.

Margaux Fitoussi is a visual anthropologist. Her work has screened at Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York, Director’s Note, Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme in Paris, Cultural Pinacothèque in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin. Her translations have been published by AUC Press and Liverpool University Press. Before beginning her doctorate in anthropology at Columbia University, she studied religion at Harvard University and history at UC Berkeley.

Cléo Cohen was born in 1993. She studied literature at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de la rue d’Ulm and at the Sorbonne. In 2017, she was a student at the Ecole documentaire de Lussas where she directed her first short documentary, Avant le depart (26’), which was selected at several festivals in France and internationally. Her first feature length film, Que Dieu te protège (77’), produced by Petit à Petit Production, was selected in several international festivals including CINEMED, IDFA, Traces de vie, JFF, CINEMAMED, CineJue Barcelone, Kaleidoskop FF, and the Festival du Film d'Auteur de Rabat, and won prizes at DOKLEIPZIG (Prix Interreligieux) and MIZNA ARAB FILM FESTIVAL (Prix du public). The film was broadcast on France 3 (l’Heure d). She is the author of several radiodocumentaries produced by France Culture including the series "Juive-arabe : comment je me suis réconciliée" (Jewish-Arab: How I Reconciled with Myself) (LSD, The Documentary Series), broadcast in May 2022.

This podcast was recorded via Zoom on the 18th of September 2023 with Luke Scalone, CEMAT Chargé de Programmes.

Download the podcast: Feed / iTunes / Podbean / Spotify

We thank Mr. Souheib Zallazi, (student at CFT, Tunisia) and Mr. Malek Saadani (student at ULT, Tunisia), for their interpretation of el Ardh Ardhi of Sabri Mesbah, performed for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast. Souheib on melodica and Malek on guitar.

Production and editing: Lena Krause, AIMS Resident Fellow at the Centre d’Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT).

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Suggested Bibliography

Abitbol, Michel. Juifs et Arabes au XXe siècle. Paris: Perrin, 2005.

Allagui, Abedelkrim. “The Jews of the Maghreb: Between Memory and History.” In A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations, edited by Abdelwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora and translated by Jane Marie Todd and Michael B. Smith. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.

Bessis, Sophie. Je vous écris d'une autre rive. Lettre à Hannah Arendt. Tunis: Éditions Elyzad, 2021.

Boum, Aomar. Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013.

Danon, Vitalis. Ninette of Sin Street, trans. Jane Kuntz. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017.

Fitoussi, Margaux Interview with Amanda Sharick. “Metaphor and Memory: Reflections on the Making of El Hara featuring Albert Memmi.” In Chiara Camarda, Katharine G. Trostel, Amanda K. Sharick (eds.), The Venice Ghetto: A Memory Space that Travels (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2022): 217-227.

Fitoussi, Margaux. “The Architecture of Home in the Works of Albert Memmi.” H-France Salon 13, no. 4 (2021).

Gottreich, Emily Benichou. “Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Maghrib.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 98, no. 4 (2008): 433-451.

Levy, Lital. “Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the "Mashriq." The Jewish Quarterly Review 98, no. 4 (2008): 452-469.

Marglin, Jessica. The Shamama Case: Contesting Citizenship in the Modern Mediterranean. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.

Memmi, Albert. “The Fecundity of Exile,” trans. Scott Davidson. Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 19, no. 2 (2011): 4–6.

Memmi, Albert. Portrait du colonisé, précédé d'un Portrait du colonisateur. Paris: Éditions Correa, 1957.

Memmi, Albert. La statue de sel. Paris: Gallimard, 1966.

Shohat, Ella. Colonialité et ruptures. Écrits sur les figures juives arabes. Edited by Joëlle Marelli and Tal Dor. Translated by Joëlle Marelli. Ontario: Lux Quebec, 2021.

Shohat, Ella. “Coming to America: Reflections on Hair and Memory Loss.” In Lisa Suhair Majaj & Amal Amireh (eds.), Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers (NY & London: Garland Publishers, 2000): 284-300.

Shohat, Ella. “Reflections of an Arab-Jew.” Emergences 3/4 (1992): 39-43.

Stora, Benjamin. Les trois exils : Juifs d’Algérie. Paris: Éditions Stock, 2006.

Stora, Benjamin and Tramor Quemeneur. Mémoires d'Algérie, Lettres, carnets et récits des Français et des Algériens dans la guerre – 1954-1962. Paris: Éditions les Arènes, 2012.

Valensi, Lucette. Juifs et musulmans en Algérie, VIIe-XXe siècle. Paris: Tallandier, 2016.

Zeghal, Malika. 2022. "The Shaping of the 1857 Security Pact in the Regency of Tunis: A reappraisal of the Nineteenth Century Constitutional Reforms." Studia Islamica 117, no.2 (2022): 275-334.

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