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Wild Relatives – Film + discussion
September 22, 2022, 5:00 pm - 7:15 pm
Welcome to the film screening of Wild Relatives (2018, 64′) followed by a conversation between Reem Shadid and Edwin Nasr titled Slow violence and ecological erasure in artistic practices from Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.
Program
- 17.00-18.05: Film screening
- 18.05-19.15: Discussion and Q&A
Language: English
Speakers
The film: Wild Relatives (2018, 64’)
Directed by: Jumana Manna
Country: Germany, Lebanon, Norway
Year: 2018
Languages: Arabic, Norwegian, English
Subtitles: English
Duration: 64 min
Deep in the earth, beneath the Arctic permafrost, seeds from all over the world are stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to provide a backup should a disaster strike. 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 the Svalbard back-ups.
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 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.