L'industrie des éponges

Directed by Albert Samama Chikly

For centuries Tunisia was the leading producer of Mediterranean commercial sponge, which was one of the country’s most important export goods. When, in 1911, Albert Samama Chikli travelled to Libya to film the Italian-Turkish war from behind the Ottoman front, he shot on his way footage for several films that he later sold to Gaumont. In Zarzis, a peninsula south of Djerba in the Gulf of Gabès he documented the traditional sponge industry, from the diving to the sales negotiations on the market. Sponges! Where have you gone? You were the divinities of our childhood bathrooms, you were in every house. We were washed with sponges and played endlessly with them, marvelling at their marvelous capacity to hold so much water and to release it when pressed. –Mariann Lewinsky