Foragers with Jumana Manna
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In this episode, we spotlight a stellar discovery from this year’s International Competition at Visions du Réel that is currently making rounds in festivals. FORAGERS by Jumana Manna.
Jumana Manna is a Berlin based 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.
Her new film, Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, Jumana artfully blends fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. These laws prohibit the collection of ‘akkoub and za’atar, which have resulted in fines and trials for those 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.
Foragers intelligently moves between documentary, fiction, and archival footage, recounting the story of this contested land and its inhabitants with wry humor and meditative pace, presenting us with a work that invites reflection on the absurdity of living under Israeli occupation.
This episode was moderated by Teyama Alkamli in Toronto, produced by Christina Zachariades in Brooklyn.
Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of archaeology, agriculture and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruly potential of ruination as an integral part of life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.
She has participated in multiple film festivals including Berlinale, Viennale, BAFICI, IFFR, Cairo Cinema Days, Goteborg film festival, Ambulante, Cinéma du Réel, Art of the Real. Her Wild Relatives (2018) won CPH:DOX’s New Visions Award, Sheffield Doc’s Environmental Film Award, DokuFest Kosovo’s Green Dox Award, and Palestine Cinema Days’ Sunbird Award. Manna’s solo exhibitions include Thirty Plumbers in the Belly, M HKA, Antwerp (2021); Tabakalera, San Sebastian, Spain (2019); The Setting of Noon, Home Works Forum 8: Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2019); A Small Big Thing, Henie Onstad Museum, Høvikodden, Oslo (2018); A Kulturrådet – Norwegian Arts Council, Berkeley Art
Magical Substance Flows into Me, Mercer Union, Toronto (2017), Malmö Kunsthall, Malmo (2016), and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015).
