FOOD & FOOTAGE X Food Cultures: A Triangular Liquid City, Where Bodies and Spices Circulate

The dinner is sold out! Feel free to stop by for the film program starting at 8:00 p.m.

This edition of FOOD & FOOTAGE views the vastness of the oceans not as continental dividing lines, but as fluid infrastructures that connect distant regions. Drawing on the historical displacement of entire populations around the globe, we show that colonization is a form of ecological and urban appropriation: cities, just like cultures, are shiftable. The program decenters Eurocentric migration narratives by situating them between anthropology and the Anthropocene, where the movement of human bodies converges with the flow of seeds, food, and sediments.

By linking this comprehensive history to the migrant and Arab diaspora in Moabit, FOOD & FOOTAGE uses cinema and shared culinary practices to explore how migrating ingredients become living architectures of memory, survival, and community-building.

Films

Extra tropical (arecaceae) / (yucca) / (hevea) / (opuntia)
by Nicolas Carrier & Marie Ouazzani
6’22’’ / 6’28’’ / 6’24’’ / 6’18’’
France, 2020–22
French/Portuguese/Dutch/Italian with English subtitles

In *Extra tropical (arecaceae) *, the palm trees of the Port of Brest remind us that they were already present during the Oligocene epoch, and they watch helplessly as they are exploited by the agricultural and food industries for the production of palm oil. They dream of a Europe that has once again become tropical in the more or less near future. *Extra tropical (yucca)* focuses on the yuccas in the port of Lisbon and views these plants of American origin as traces left behind by the intense travels of the triangular trade. Extra tropical (hevea) focuses on the rubber trees in the Port of Antwerp and their role in the exploitation of the former Belgian colonies in Africa by the chemical and automotive industries for the rubber they produce. In *Extra tropical* (opuntia) , the nopales of the Port of Genoa tell us about their spread via maritime transport. In light of the recent explosion of mass tourism and cruises, they dream of becoming sanctuaries to counter the ecological crisis.

“Whoever finds me standing still, push me into the middle”
by Alina d’Alva Duchrow
3’12’’
Brazil, 2018
Portuguese/Spanish with English subtitles

Whoever finds me standing still, push me into the middle —that was the phrase often seen on the small wooden boats that migrant workers, setting off into the forest without knowing if they would ever return home, used as a means of communication and as a sign of faith. The people from Ceará, living in exile in the Amazon region, cast the boats into the river to fulfill promises they had made to Saint Francisco de Canindé in moments of despair. In the video, the artist reads aloud a letter written by a woman who lived in the Amazon region in the early 19th century and addressed directly to Saint Francisco, while we see her propelling a boat down the river. This symbolizes the desire to preserve the flow of memories—in an explicit refusal to erase them—and thus prevent future shipwrecks.

A Semente
by Alina d’Alva Duchrow
17’58’’
Brazil, 2022
Portuguese/Spanish with English subtitles