Alan Marcus (Reader in Film and Visual Culture; Head of Department, King's College, University of Aberdeen)
The Ghetto as City Symphony
As part of the In Time of Place research project (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/timeofplace/), which examines sites associated with Jewish identity, the Shoah and Diaspora, this paper will explore how the film, The Ghetto (Marcus, 2009), associates with methodological similarities of the City Symphony genre. The 30-minute film, which operates without narration or interviews, adopts a contemporary inquiry into transfigured sense of place in the area of Venice known as the Ghetto Vecchio and Ghetto Nuovissimo. Commonly referred to as the locale where the word ‘ghetto’ is derived from, the film offers a medley of engagements with different users of the site, including tourists, locals and both Jewish and non-Jewish participants. The paper will consider to what extent the film, as a city symphony, presents an observational pastiche of site-specific urban activity, or whether it ultimately foregrounds a subtle counterpoint to excavate real and metaphorical cultural and architectural juxtapositions. In this regard, I will probe the way the film and its use of montage positions a creative narrative mix of touristic crossings, recent Jewish reappropriation, and traumatic inferences of a society once enclosed and later subjected to deportations. Within this city symphony, what is unveiled as pilgrimage, packaging and performance?
