Amzrou Synagogue Interior, Series II, No. 2, 2009 (excerpt)
Running Time: 1:57 minutes / HD / colour

Dust is illuminated by light in the interior of the Amzrou Synagogue, a Kasbah in Southern Morocco.

Camera: Sylvia Safdie
Editing: Patrick Andrew Boivin, Sylvia Safdie
Audio: Silent

         thousands of particles dance in a pool of light
         like stars in another planet
         their magnitude unknown

         patterns of vivid strands
         fluffy with dust,
         delicate as silk,
         tangled, they shiver
         announcing the sky

The subject of the Moroccan series concerns the Jewish Berbers of southern Morocco who lived there for 2500 years. The work is a poetic evocation of a place and marks the dispersion of a society from its home, its place of origin. It is the result of research, interviews and several trips that I made to southern Morocco, starting in 1981 that culminated in a series of videos, photographs and drawings.

Amzrou, is a Kasbah in the Draa valley, at the tip of the Sahara Desert in southern Morocco. For over 2,500 years it was the home of a large Jewish community that lived for centuries in harmony with the local Berber tribes. Today, members of the Draouis tribe are the sole occupants of the Kasbah and occupy the homes in the mellah (Jewish quarter), where Jews used to live. The Jews were involved in crafts (jewelry, metalwork, woodwork, leather, etc.) as well as in trade. In 1958, the 18 families living in the mellah left for Israel. Today the Draouis continue the tradition of the artisans and they attribute their knowledge to the Jews who taught them their trade and left them their tools and casts.

The synagogue is located at 8 Mellah, in the heart of the old Jewish quarter. It was constructed approximately 800 years ago. It was abandoned when the Jews left. Local Draoui[s] families used it as an oven for cooking and baking, hence the ash black color stained on the walls and ground. Today, a guardian, Mbark, will open the door for visitors for a sum of money.

Pise, the traditional material used in the buildings of the area is as free as the earth. It is the ground one walks on. The earth is shovelled up and cast through a strainer and then mixed with straw and water. It is known as “the material blessed by God.” In a synagogue, small windows, and the quiet and soft intimacy of the sound inside a pise structure, brings a spiritual element. At the same time pise is in a continual state of erosion, shedding fine dust. Today, after years of abandonment, the synagogue is filled with layers of dust accumulated over generations.

This video was shown at the exhibition Amzrou/Morocco at Galerie J. Yahouda, Montréal in 2013.