The forced displacement of Jews in Iraq and the manifestations of return In the movie "Venice of the East"
Authors:   University of Human Development, M. Ali Jabara Kawthar 
Published: August 2022

The character of the Jew was absent from Iraqi cinematic works, while it was present in many Arab cinematic works produced in other Arab countries, and the manner of presenting these characters and the goals behind choosing that method differed. While this character was absent from the Iraqi cinematic narration, it was present in the Iraqi novelist narration, especially after the year 2003. Its presence in the Iraqi narration was diverse, due to the specificity of the Iraqi Jewish character and its attachment to the idea of being an Iraqi citizen, and the exclusion and forced displacement that Jews were subjected to in the modern history of Iraq. This absence in the cinematic texts is a continuation of this enforced absence. The Jewish character was never present in the Iraqi cinematic narration, as far as we know, except in one short fictional movie, which is the subject of this research. The research dealt with the movie “Venice of the East 2018” by screenwriter Mustafa Sattar Al-Rikabi and director Bahaa Al-Kazemi. We chose this movie for several reasons, some technical and some non-technical. One of the non-technical reasons is that feature cinematic texts rarely dealt with Jewish characters. The movie is the only Iraqi feature movie, according to our knowledge, produced after 2003, dealt with these characters, and assumed that one of them would return to Iraq. Therefore, our choice was while we were thinking of a research sample dealing with the personality of the Iraqi Jew and what is related to him and how it was expressed graphically. As for the technical reasons, it is due to the quality of the cinematic language level that the director employed to express what he wants in this movie, whose only hero is the character of the unnamed Jewish man played by the Iraqi actor (Sami Kaftan). As well as, many of the signs contained in the visual text that provide indications that may be conscious or unconscious of the situation of this segment of Iraqis, and this will become clear in the course of the research. 4 The research is divided into a number of subjects, including historical theory and applied cinema. The historical subjects included a set of points, namely (the Jews who they are and where they live) and (their presence in Iraq). The research then passed on the existence of (the Jewish character in the Iraqi narrative narrative), and how the Iraqi novelist dealt with the Jew in his novels after 2003, and does the Iraqi narration distinguish between the Jew and the Israeli or the Zionist. The applied part of the research followed, and included a (critical view of the movie) and then passed on the cinematic narration of events in the last subject (the narration of the cinematography). We studied the cinematic narration from three perspectives (cinematic shots, camera movement, camera angle and point of view), the research concluded with a set of results from criticism and analysis. It is worth mentioning that this research is an integral part of a previous unpublished study entitled (Ethnographic movie as artistic memory), which is an ethnographic study of the personality of the Jew in the Iraqi short movie.