Carta à Reina/ Letter to Reina
During the 19th century, due to the social, economic, health and political conditions to which they were submitted at the time, many Jews living in Morocco were attracted to Brazil, which had a monopoly on the rubber trade. Lured by the South American Eldorado, these Moroccans tried their luck in the small towns of the Amazon.
Letters to Reina is a reading of an excerpt from a letter written by David Amiel, who left Morocco for Amazonia in 1904, addressed to his wife Reina, who remained in Morocco. David's letters recount the journey from departure from the port of Tangier and his arrival in Belem. The video is an acoustic work more than a visual one. Throughout the video we see the image of the Medina of Salé and as background sounds captured in the Amazon rainforest. The letter is initially read in Portuguese and then concomitantly with a reading in Darija (a language spoken in Morocco). The caption that stands out in large format is in French, the colonial language spoken in the country. The superposition of sounds and images in different languages causes the spectator a certain discomfort, a destabilization. In this "deterritorialization" we can hardly identify the things, the places, the sounds, like a foreigner in his drift.