Wild Relatives

Film:  Jumana Mana, DE/LB/NO 2018, 66’, Englische Originalfassung, anschließendes Publikumsgespräch mit Julia Bar-Tal, Jumana Manna

Wild Relatives (2018), © Jumana Manna

»Wild Relatives« starts from an event that has sparked media interest worldwide: In 2012, an international agricultural research center was forced to relocate from Aleppo to Lebanon due to the Syrian Revolution turned war, and began a laborious process of planting their seed collection from back-up seeds of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. At the vault, deep beneath arctic permafrost, seeds from all over the world are stored. Following the path of this transaction of seeds between the Arctic and Lebanon, a series of encounters unfold a matrix of human and non-human lives between these two distant spots of the Earth. It captures the articulation between this large-scale international initiative and its local implementation in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, carried out primarily by young migrant women. The meditative pace of the film patiently teases out tensions between state and individual, industrial and organic approaches to seed saving, climate change and biodiversity, witnessed through the journey of these seeds.

Die Veranstaltung ist Teil des Projektes »Licht Luft Scheiße. Perspektiven auf Ökologie und Moderne« – realisiert durch: Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum der Freien Universität Berlin (BGBM), Martin-Elsaesser-Stiftung, Nachbarschaftsakademie im Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg und neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK)

Gefördert im Fonds Bauhaus heute der Kulturstiftung des Bundes und durch die LOTTO-Stiftung Berlin.

Das Filmprogramm wird kuratiert von Florian Wüst