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THE WOLF OF BAGHDAD - IRAQI CLOSING NIGHT

27 February 2020

7:00PM- IRAQI CLOSING NIGHT

THE WOLF OF BAGHDAD

Directed by Carol Issacs/ The Surreal McCoy
UK, 2020, 46 min
Graphic Memoir
U.S. Première

Synopsis:
THE WOLF OF BAGHDAD, a graphic memoir, comes to life panel by panel as a motion comic with a magical soundtrack of Judeo-Arabic and Iraqi music. In the 1920s, approximately 25% of Baghdads population was Jewish. Within a couple of decades, nearly all 150,000 had been expelled, killed, or had escaped. This graphic memoir of a lost homeland is a wordless narrative by an author homesick for a home she has never visited. Transported by the power of music to the ancestral, pre-exilic Old Jewish Quarter of Baghdad, the author encounters its ghost-like inhabitants, who are revealed as long-gone family members. As she explores the city, journeying through their memories and her imagination, she at first sees successful integration, and cultural and social cohesion. Then the mood turns darker with the fading of this ancient communitys fortunes. The wolf, believed by Baghdadi Jews to protect from harmful demons, sees that Jewish life in Iraq is over, and returns the author safely back to London. THE WOLF OF BAGHDAD was made possible with the support of the Arts Council England and Dangoor Education (in memory of Sir Naim Dangoor).

Director bio:
Carol Isaacs is a keyboard player and accordionist in the pop and world music fields, recording and touring worldwide with many international artists including Sinéad OConnor (Ireland), The Indigo Girls (US), and Ahmed Mukhtar (Iraq). Also known as cartoonist The Surreal McCoy (published in the New Yorker, Spectator, Private Eye) she drew THE WOLF OF BAGHDAD graphic memoir based on her own familys recollections and then turned it into a motion comic. She also plays Arabic accordion on the soundtrack. The graphic memoir was published by Myriad Editions in January 2020 (UK).