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 duJudaïsme 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.

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).