Jumanna Manna

The body and the land

For fifteen years, the young Palestinian filmmaker and visual artist, Jumana Manna, has been exploring how forms of economic, political and colonial power condition human and plant life and leave their imprint on landscapes and bodies.

Be it young men in East Jerusalem, a masked ball in 1942 Jerusalem, the music of historic Palestine or the gathering of wild plants, each of Jumana Manna’s films circumvent the frameworks of an expected reality to document the staunch, resolute persistence of Palestinian culture and its social fabric. The violence of history is countered by subtlety, humour, the filmmaker’s tender gaze, as well as by an immense formal freedom that breathes a wind of liberty and impertinence. And, even more so perhaps, as her films are feminist, decolonial and ecological, which is what makes Jumana Manna a socially committed filmmaker.