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,