Joe Blog

Palestine Cinema Days Around the World is a global platform that transcends borders to bring Palestinian stories to the forefront of the world’s conscience. Cinema Solidarity Africa, an independent collective of artists, journalists and filmmakers, is honoured to participate in this year’s screenings on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
Booking: Purchase a “R20 Cafe Voucher” to reserve your seat for this screening. This will get you R20 off your Bioscope Cafe bill on this day.
Foragers (2022)
Directed by Jumana Manna. Documentary. Dur 1hr 5mins.
Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it employs fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ‘akkoub and za’atar (thyme), 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 disposses them from their land while the Occupation’s 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 joy and knowledge embodied 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.
MORE ON PALESTINE CINEMA DAYS AROUND THE WORLD
“We gather across continents to confront a history that continues to shape our present. More than a century after a colonial promise made over Palestinian land and lives, we come together to say: We are still here. Our stories are still alive. Our voices remain impossible to silence.
Palestine Cinema Days have grown into a borderless, community-driven act of cultural resistance. Palestine Cinema Days Around the World was born from urgency, from the need to protect our stories against systematic erasure, silencing, and distortion. Palestine Cinema Days Around the World is more than a festival. It is a collective declaration: that Palestinian stories belong everywhere, that our culture will survive, and that even in the darkest moments, we will continue to create, gather, and speak.”