Foragers

Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee, and Jerusalem, Foragers moves between fiction, documentary, and archival footage to portray the traditions of foraging by Palestinians and their criminalisation by Israeli nature protection laws. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ’akkoub and za’atar, 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 defences, Foragers captures the inherited love, joy and knowledge in these traditions whilst acknowledging them as gestures of resilience. By reframing the terms and constraints of preservation, the film asks who determines what is made extinct and what gets to live on.

This screening engages with the second chapter of Taring Padi’s Rakyat Pasti Menang, on display in Ibraaz’s Majlis, which focuses on two core concerns informing the collective’s work: land struggles and workers’ rights. Taring Padi’s banners, woodcut prints, posters, and cardboard puppets express a commitment to fighting for food sovereignty and land justice in a world where land remains largely concentrated in the hands of states and corporations. Foragers expands on these issues, exploring how, as articulated by the director Jumana Manna, the “very simple act of going out and collecting wild weeds” becomes about “a much wider politics of land control and sovereignty.”

Doors open at 2.30pm; event starts at 3pm and ends at 4.30pm.

Image credit: still from Jumana Manna, Foragers (2022). Courtesy of the artist.