AMAR and YEN invite you to a private screening of 'Remember Baghdad' at Somerset House cinema

AMAR Foundation and IBBC's Young Executive Network (YEN), invite you to a private screening of 'Remember Baghdad' a new film made about the last Iraqi Jews in Baghdad with original footage from the C20th.

We will be joined by Baroness Nicholson and Edwin Shuker, the main protagonist in the film and the film's producers who will give a short talk about the making of the film and their experiences.

The film lasts for 70 minutes and we hope you'll enjoy networking and social conversation before and after.

We are looking to cover our costs with this event, and if possible enable a modest donation to AMAR Foundation's healthcare and education work in Iraq. Thank you!

THE FILM

Five families from the Jewish community look back on a scarcely imaginable time in Baghdad – Iraq was booming, it was pleasure-seeking, and there was inter-communal trust. Iraq was once one of the most diverse places on earth, more tolerant of its minorities than any European nation.

Today, after decades of war and instability, Iraq is a very different place. In spite of the danger, North Londoner Edwin Shuker decides to return to the country he loved. We follow him back to Baghdad. He wants to buy a house in Iraq so that he can say “the Jews have not all gone”. He wants to plant a seed of hope for the future.

On the hundredth anniversary of the British invasion in 1917, Remember Baghdad is the untold story of Iraq, an unmissable insight into how the country developed from a completely new perspective – through the eyes of the Jews who lived there for 2,600 years until only a generation ago.

With vivid home movies and archive news footage, eight characters tell their remarkable stories, of fun that was had, and the fear that followed as Iraq laid foundations for decades of unrest. Amid the country’s instability today we follow one Iraqi Jew on a journey home, back to Baghdad.

The story begins in a happy period for the Jews. In 1917 a third of the citizens of Baghdad are Jewish. The descendants of the scholars who wrote the Babylonian Talmud are now westernising fast. In 1947 the first Miss Baghdad is Jewish. Jews are parliamentarians. They attend fancy parties and picnics on the Tigris with the elite.

But after the creation of Israel they are no longer safe. A mass exodus takes place, though many thousands stay behind, loyal to the country they love. Finally, after 1967, Saddam Hussein mobilises a mass movement against them and they must flee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z86Dhp-D9-o