The Image of the Jew(s) in Cinema

The representation of Jews in cinema constitutes a well-established field of research in visual studies. However, by predominantly relying on the perspective of the majority on the minority, the external gaze on the observed group has often been privileged, tending to hypostasize the concept of "Jew" at the expense of the diverse manifestations that the Jewish experience has undergone throughout the centuries and in various geographic and social contexts in which Jewish communities have lived.  Moreover, scholarship in the last two decades has predominantly addressed cinema as a repository of the collective imaginary and as a reflecting mirror of the ethnic, religious, and social identities in a national context. In this seminar, we will try to look at the feature production from the opposite vantage point: what are its absent genera? Its invisible figures? Which situations and places are not represented on national screens?

This seminar will therefore focus on the cinematic representation of the Jewish difference in four different geographical settings around the Mediterranean and beyond (Israel, Italy, Spain and Portugal) in order to assess whether a religious experience, such as Shabbat, an existential condition, such as marranism, and a transnational phenomenon such as a diaspora can or cannot be represented on the screen.