On Sunday the 20th of October we invite you to the first screening in the framework of weaving our fishing nets, co-learning assembly. The world like a jewel in the hand, a film by Ariella Aïsha Azoula, travels over open books, looted objects and postcards to look for the imperial foundations of the world in which we live. Within this wide landscape it focuses on the destruction of the Jewish Muslim world that existed in North Africa, making it imaginable and inhabitable again. Objects and images are held captive in museums and archives outside of the places from where they were looted are only the visible tip of the iceberg of the mass colonial plunder of Africa. The film looks at them as part of the substantial wealth accumulated through the extraction of raw materials, labor, knowledge and skills, including the “visual wealth” attained by putting people in front of the colonizers’ cameras. (film duration: 58min)

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is an author, art curator, filmmaker, and theorist of photography and visual culture. She is a professor of Modern Culture and Media and Comparative Literature at Brown University and an independent curator of Archives and Exhibitions.