“A Long Journey: The Hidden Jews of the Southwest,” a new film by Isaac Artenstein, will have its area TV premiere Jan. 11 at 10 p.m. on KPBS.
The hourlong documentary is the latest work by the Oceanside-based director, whose previous films include “Tijuana Jews,” “To the Ends of the Earth: A Portrait of Jewish San Diego,” “Border Brujo” and “Challah Rising in the Desert: The Jews of New Mexico.”
“A Long Journey” was completed prior to the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The film focuses on residents of the American Southwest known as conversos. The term refers to people who have lived as Catholics in order to hide their Jewish heritage. Many conversos fled their native countries during the Spanish Inquisition of the late 1400s or during the subsequent Mexican Inquisition, which stretched from the late 1500s to the early 1800s.