What do we talk about when we talk about…. With Heidi Grunebaum

Film Screening and discussion of „The Village Under the Forest“ (2013) by Mark J Kaplan & Heidi Grunebaum

After four years of work, Heidi Grunebaum and Mark Kaplan’s feature-length documentary film, The Village Under the Forest (Grey Matter Media, 2013), had its world premier at the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival in June 2013. Unfolding as a personal meditation from the Jewish diaspora, The Village Under the Forest explores the hidden remains of the destroyed Palestinian village of Lubya, which lies under a purposefully cultivated forest plantation called South Africa Forest. Using the forest and the village ruins as metaphors, the documentary explores themes related to the erasure of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) and the persistence of memory. Through a multi-layered visual, aural and narrative assemblage, the film asks that we imagine a shared future as an ethical obligation in which dignity, acknowledgement, return and co-habitation may be possible in Israel/Palestine.