Screening 'Foragers', Jumana Manna

Foragers (2022) describes the dramas surrounding the practice of gathering edible wild plants in Palestine/Israel with ironic humor and a meditative pace. Filmed in the Golan Heights, Galilee, and Jerusalem, it uses fiction, documentary, and archival material to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs.

The restrictions prohibit the gathering of akkoub and za'atar (thyme), similar to artichoke, and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds of people caught collecting these native plants. For Palestinians, these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that strips them even further of their land while state representatives of the occupation insist on their scientific expertise and duty to protect.

Following the plants from nature to the kitchen, from the chases between the foragers and the nature patrol to the defenses in court, Foragers captures the joy and embodied knowledge within these traditions along with their resistance to the prohibitive law. By reframing the terms and restrictions of preservation, the film raises questions about the politics of extinction—namely, who determines what becomes extinct and what is allowed to live.

Activity led by les Mòniques 25/26 within the framework of the Week for Palestine

With the collaboration of Jumana Manna

Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores the articulations of power through the body, the land, and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and the histories of place. Moving between the seemingly divergent mediums of film, abstract sculpture, and collage, Manna addresses how performative bodies, material fragments, and landscapes desire and narrate pasts, presents, and futures that persist and resist the violences imposed upon them.