‘The ruined land: the land in ruins’, a programme of films curated by film curator Alice Butler in parallel to the Brian Maguire exhibition La Grande Illusion.’
Join us for a screening of ‘Foragers’(64 mins), 2022; by Jumana Manna. 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 moves between fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs.
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 inherited love, joy and knowledge 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.
With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler.
This screening is in association with La Grande Illusion, the solo exhibition of work by artist Brian Maguire (3 October 2024 – 23 March 2025)
Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.
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.
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All films in the series ‘The ruined land: the land in ruins’
Friday 18 October 2024, 1pm
Film Screening: La Grande Illusion (1hr 53 minutes), 1937; by Jean Renoir.
La Grande Illusion takes place in a German fortress where two French aviators – aristocratic Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and working-class Breton lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin) – are held captive by monocled Captain von Rauffenstein (played by the silent film director Erich von Stroheim). With an introduction by Film Curator Alice Butler. Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.
Friday 22 November 2024, 1pm
Film Screening: Foragers (64 mins), 2022; by Jumana Manna
‘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 moves between fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler. Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.Friday 10 January 2025, 1pm
Shouting at the Ground (21 mins), 2017; by Graeme Arnfield
In a peat bog in North West England a Spanish woman was murdered, her body buried and subsumed into the treacherously dense ecological matter. A matter which labours have extracted for centuries, selling this fertile material as fuel worldwide; a material which upon burning releases timeless carbon deposits into our increasingly precarious and damaged ecosphere. After laying dormant under the rich dark peat for an unknown amount of time a body returned to the surface but its identity had become dislocated; it has become entwined with the history of its material host. With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler and Graeme Arnfield. Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.Friday 14 February 2025, 1pm
History of the Present (46 mins), 2023; by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon
An experimental feminist opera-film about class and conflict, ‘History of the Present’ has been made collaboratively by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, featuring new compositions by Annea Lockwood, libretto by Maria Fusco and improvisational vocal work by Héloïse Werner. This intersectional, intergenerational feminist work forefronts working-class women’s voices to ask: who has the right to speak, and in what way? With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon. Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.
