Village under the Forest (S. Africa, 2013)
When greening is an act of obliteration…
As a child in South Africa, writer/narrator Heidi Grunebaum put her pennies in a JNF (Jewish National Fund) box to help build a forest in Israel. Twenty years later she revisits the forest she helped finance, only to find that it was not a project for growth but rather one that would disguise deliberate obliteration of the Palestinian village Lubya, by Zionist forces in 1948.
Prompted by a questioning of what it meant to be complicit with Apartheid, the film tackles the question of responsibility in light of the erasure of the village.
”Village Under the Forest” is directed by South African filmmaker, Mark Kaplan and written and narrated by Cape Town based author Heidi Grunebaum. Grunebaum had visited the “South Africa Forest” in Israel in the mid-1980s but when she discovered the ruined Palestinian village of Lubya beneath South Africa Forest, she says, “it felt like the rug being pulled out from under my feet. I knew I’d been there before, but I’d had absolutely no understanding or ability to imagine then that my trees were erasing the presence of {the Palestinian} people who had lived there and had been forcibly removed {by Israel}…
Followed by a discussion – guest speaker to be announced.
Plus delicious Middle-Eastern food by Alia!
Doors open 7pm, event starts: 7.30pm. Free entry.
at Passing Clouds, 1 Richmond Road, Dalston E8 4AA
CATASTROPHE CLUB: Film and discussion events