Events

Memoirs of a Tropical Jew / Mémoires d’un Juif tropical

with Joseph Morder in conversation with Dominique Bluher
Friday, April 29, 2022 - 7:00pm

In celebration of the retirement of Dominique Bluher, lecturer in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, we are pleased to present three screenings and conversations with filmmakers whose work had a profound impact on her thinking about movies. 

While enjoying a summer love affair in Paris in 1984, director Joseph Morder reflects on his unusual childhood in Ecuador, the haven to which his parents escaped from persecution by the Nazis in Poland during World War II. Because nothing remains of his childhood but memories, Morder substitutes images of Parisian streets and buildings that replace the streets and buildings of Guayaquil, and uses actors to stand in for the figures from his childhood recollections. The result is a film that blurs the lines between fiction and documentary, a film autobiography driven by emotion rather than history. (Joseph Morder, 1988, France, 80 min., 16mm print courtesy of Harvard Film Archive)

Co-sponsored by the Department of Cinema and Media Studies.