Director's Notes

I heard about the ethnic neighborhood of Jews from Rhodes that had existed around 55th and Hoover while working as a language instructor just a few blocks away, at the USC University Park Campus. At that time, in the late 90s, I was doing linguistic fieldwork among the Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) speaking community of Los Angeles. And coincidentally I was attending a broadcast journalism class for which I had to write the treatment for a documentary. It seemed to me that the story of this particular group of Sephardic Jews and their vanishing language and culture was a good topic to write on for this assignment, and so I started researching it and conducting preliminary interviews.

For this particular project I decided to interview Regina Hanan and Rebecca Levy, the two consultants that were fluent Ladino speakers and had a better, firsthand knowledge of the Sephardic culture from Rhodes. I also interviewed a younger US born participant, Art Benveniste, a very articulate and knowledgeable member of the community who even took us around the neighborhood sharing his childhood memories there. Sadly both Regina and Rebecca passed away within the following year.

It was only recenty that I was able to continue working on the film. I returned to Los Angeles and reconnected with Art and the families of Rebecca and Regina, who gave me access to their private photo collections. Furthermore I had access to the archives at Temple Tifereth Israel. And as I was spending a sabbatical year at Harvard University I was able to use their immense bibliographic resources to find even more information on the subject and additional historical pictures.

Now I had some substantial material to work with but still there were many holes and gaps in the story. I considered using a narrator or text on screen to complement the interviews, but neither seemed to work. Finally I decided to introduce myself as another participant, not only as an expert that has conducted research on the topic, but also as someone that had met the people interviewed in the film and had been fascinated by their story. Introducing this role of expert and facilitator that shares the story with the audience worked better than any of the other solutions I considered.

There are quite a few documentary films about the Sephardic Jews. My take on the topic is influenced by my background as a linguist and educator. On the one hand there is a focus on linguistic issues. I find particularly compelling how the participants express their views in the face of the decline and loss of their language conveying attitudes such as resignation, defiance or regret. Likewise the movie takes an educational slant: it aims to inform viewers about the history of the Sephardic Jews and their cultural heritage and at the same time help them understand the experiences of speakers of vanishing minority languages.

Even though the film deals with a very specific group of people and their rather peculiar story I feel that what really makes it work is its treatment of topics that appeal to a wider audience and never get old: the adventures of immigrants that leave their home in search of a better life, the nostalgia of vanishing cultures, the reality of minority language decline and loss as a condition of the modern world, and the changes in the cultural and linguistic landscapes in urban settings.