Join CAMS on April 20th at 5pm in Gilman 50 for a special screening of the documentary The Missing Tale (Emlékek őrei, 2022, Hungary) followed by responses from Lila Fabro (MLL) and Kunal Joshi (Anthropology) and a post-screening Q&A with director Klára Trencsényi. The film is part of the CAMS film series Films You Cannot See Anywhere Else, which highlights unique and important films with small, local distribution.
The Missing Tale explores the fractured history of the Jews of Cochin, India. Klára’s first impressions are formed from her encounter with Sarah Cohen, one of the last surviving members of Cochin’s once-thriving Paradesi Jewish community, Sephardic Jews who had arrived in Cochin after the Spanish Inquisition. These initial perceptions are challenged when she meets Babu, a 60-year-old member of the Black Jewish Malabar community who are said to have arrived in Cochin thousands of years earlier, but who were considered inferior by the Paradesi Jews. Racism within the Cochin Jewish communities compels Klára to reflect on her own hidden Eastern European Jewish identity. It asks, “What happens when you grew up in a family that has been silent about its past and you suddenly find a guide to your roots on the other side of the planet?”
For almost 2000 years there has been a flourishing Jewish community on Synagogue Lane in the South Indian city of Cochin. When I started to shoot this documentary, there were seven people left. Thousands of Cochini Jews migrated in the 1950s to the promised land of Israel leaving their ancestors behind in Cochini cemeteries. Among the remaining ones, I came to discover my Jewish grandmother in the eldest Jewess of Cochin, Sarah Cohen. Once the backbone of the community, the 95-year-old matriarch was slowly losing her memory – thus the memory of the entire community was in danger. The film follows the efforts of three self-appointed “guardians” to carry on with the age-old heritage of Cochini Jews. One of them is a Muslim tailor, Thaha (45) who takes over Sarah Cohen’s embroidery of Jewish ritual cloths and tries to document the last moments of her life. The other one is Babu (60), the last guardian of a crumbling synagogue, whose life mission is to restore the building and the community rituals. The third one is a contemporary Israeli artist, Meydad (34) who comes to Cochin to paint the portrayal of deceased community members on the collapsing Jewish buildings. And during the shooting of this documentary, I have become the last guardian, entrusted by my “found grandmother” and her “found footage,” lots of personal archives, to tell the world about this community. But while doing so, I also tried to fill the gaps of my Eastern European identity with the heritage shared by this proud Jewess during the last days of her life.
Klára Trencsényi
A film director and cinematographer committed to creative and social documentaries, Klára graduated from the Hungarian Film Academy in Budapest as Director of Photography. Prior to her first feature length award-winning documentary, Train to Adulthood, she directed two mid-length documentaries (Corvin Variations, 2011, Birds Way, 2009), and a short documentary (3 Weddings: Elena & Leo, 2009).
Her work has been screened around the world, including DokLeipzig, IDFA Amsterdam, Margaret Mead Festival New York, South East European Film Festival Los Angeles, Sarajevo Film Festival, Guth Gafa Festival Ireland, CinéDoc Tbilisi Georgia, DocLisboa Portugal, One World Festival Bucharest, Encounters Festival South-Africa and shown on television in Europe and Thailand. Klára has worked in many international productions as director of photography with Dutch, American and Hungarian directors and won several awards.