Wednesday, September 10, 7:00 pm in Z. Smith Reynolds Auditorium
*Jews of Egypt (2013, 96 minutes, Arabic and French with English subtitles)
Amir Ramses’ documentary begins by asking ordinary Egyptians on the street what they think of Jewish people. Most of the answers he receives are negative, but this was not always the case in Egypt. Through his documentary, Ramses tries to recapture fragments of the lives of members of the Egyptian community in the first half of the twentieth century, until the Jewish community’s second grand exodus after the tripartite attack of 1956 when persecution of Jews by the Egyptian authorities and by radical Islamists became unbearable. The documentary is an attempt to understand the changes in Egyptian society from full acceptance and tolerance, to a rejection of its Jewish members.
*Sponsored by the Middle East and South Asia Studies Program.