Foragers

On Thursday, October 10, Ocean Space hosts a screening of the film Foragers (2022) by artist and filmmaker Jumana Manna. Foragers explores conflicts related to the harvesting of wild plants in Palestine and Israel, showing the impact of Israeli laws prohibiting the collection of certain species on the traditions and lives of the Palestinian people.

Jasmine Barri, Italian-Palestinian activist and visual artist, will introduce the evening and comment the film with the possibility to answer questions from the public.

The screening is part of the official collateral event of La Biennale di Venezia "SOUTH WEST BANK" organised by Dar Jacir and Artists + Allies x Hebron.

Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it employs fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ’akkoub and za’atar (thyme), and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants. For Palestinians, these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that further alienates them from their land while Israeli state representatives insist on their scientific expertise and duty to protect. Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from the chases between the foragers and the nature patrol, to courtroom defenses, Foragers captures the joy and knowledge embodied in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law. By reframing the terms and constraints of preservation, the film raises questions around the politics of extinction, namely who determines what is made extinct and what gets to live on.

Co-commissioned by BAMPFA The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, BAK basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht; and The Toronto Biennale (2022). Supported by Arab Fund for Arts and Culture - AFAC, The Fritt Ord Foundation, Arts Council Norway – Kulturrådet

Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores how power is articulated, focusing on the body, land and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of architecture, agriculture and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruliness of ruination, life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.

Jasmine Barri is an Italian-Palestinian activist and visual Artist based in Venice, MA Visual Art’s student at IUAV university of Venice. Her research is focused on Palestinian Archive, in particular photographic and video contents about her family which living in Diaspora since 1960.