Film Screening: Jumana Manna’s Foragers (2022)

Location: Hart House Debates Room, Second Floor, 2034 Hart House
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This event will screen the film Foragers (2022) by Palestinian artist and filmmaker Jumana Manna. The film follows foragers of ‘akkoub, a quintessential plant of Palestinian cuisine and culture. Israeli authorities have prohibited the foraging of ‘akkoub since 2006, making it one among many edibles that have been outlawed since the establishment of the state. Under the guise of nature conservation, these laws were implemented to alienate Palestinians from their ancestral culture and lands. Manna captures the harsh reality of foraging for ‘akkoub in Palestine, the absurdities and ever-present anxiety. The cyclical nature of foraging (returning to the same landscapes, engaging in the same gestures, following seasonal rhythms) produces a continuity counter to the fragmentation imposed by the Israeli state. Defying state laws and policing, foraging persists.

This screening is free and open to the public. Registration is recommended.

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Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores the articulations of power through the body, land and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Moving between the seemingly divergent media of film, abstract sculpture, and collage, Manna addresses how performing bodies, material fragments, and landscapes both desire and narrate pasts, presents, futures that remain excessive to the violences imposed upon them. Her recent work has dealt with the paradoxes of preservation – particularly with regards to land practices and the law – probing the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruliness of ruination, life and regeneration.

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Image: Jumana Manna, Foragers (2022) in Hollybush Gardens. Photo: Eva Herzog.