"Baghdad Twist": film over Irakese Joden op IDFA festival Amsterdam

Dit structureel onderbelichte aspect van het Midden-Oosten conflict breng ik graag onder de aandacht.

Wouter
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BAGHDAD TWIST
Regisseur Joe Balass interviewt zijn moeder Valentine, een joodse Irakese die haar geboorteland ontvluchtte in 1970, toen Joe vier was. Het gesprek is persoonlijk maar weerspiegelt ook de algemene toenmalige situatie van joden in Irak. Na enkele machtswisselingen in Irak in de jaren zestig en met de groeiende weerzin tegen de opkomende macht van Israël kwam het leven van de joodse familie onder druk te staan. De zoon vraagt door, of ze het niet zagen aankomen, of ze niet eerder hadden moeten vluchten. De moeder antwoordt met beschrijvingen van angst en onzekerheid.
http://www.idfa.nl/nl/festival/films-a-z/film.aspx?id=33309
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From: Joe Balass
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Subject: Fwd: film on Iraqi Jews at IDFA festival

BAGHDAD TWIST will be playing at the upcoming IDFA festival in Amsterdam. It is a 30 minute documentary about Iraq's once thriving Jewish community. The film is also in competition for the Silver Cub Award.

The film will be screened on:

* zaterdag 24 november 2007      22:00   Munt 10 WP     regular
* woensdag 28 november 2007   19:30   Tuschinski 2     regular
* vrijdag 30 november 2007        11:45   Munt 11            regular

Baghdad Twist
Joe Balass

It could be anywhere. A mid-1960s wedding reception captured on Super-8 film. Narrow ties. Bouffant hairdos. Flickering images of a joyful couple and smiling guests. A band plays and people fill the dance floor to do the latest craze: The Twist.
 
But this is Baghdad. And for the city's Jewish community, it is an evening of joy during a prolonged period of persecution. Within a few years, most of the wedding guests pictured in the film will have fled the city, never to return. Within a decade, the community, which has existed since Babylonian times, will be all but gone.
 
For filmmaker Joe Balass and his mother Valentine, a memory is recalled, shared, constructed, from the fragments that remain.
 
"You were just a little kid. We left the house. You should see it. It's like someone is still living there. The beds, the tables, the furniture, the food in the fridge—everything. You thought it was a game. You were not even four."
 
Baghdad Twist is a visual memoir of one family's life in Iraq before escaping to a new home in Canada in the fall of 1970. Featuring a never-before-seen collection of archival images, home movies and family photographs from Baghdad, the film pulls back the curtain on Iraq's once thriving Jewish community, its perilous final years and its remarkable ability to find solace in the shadow of fear.


Filmography:

Joe Balass:
Parting Words (fiction, 2006)
The Devil in the Holy Water (2002),
On a Very Violet Night in the Apartements Daphne (fiction, 1995),
Nana, George & Me (1997),
http://www.compassproductions.ca

Canada, 2007
colour / black and white, video, 30 min

Credits:
Director: Joe Balass
Screenplay: Joe Balass
Editing: Annie Jean
Sound: David Ballard
Music: Dino Giancola; Janet Lumb
Production: Germaine Ying Gee Wong
Executive Producer: Ravida Din
World Sales: National Film Board of Canada