The artist, intellectual and storyteller John Berger is the subject of…
John Berger or The Art of Looking

- Description
- Reviews
- Credits
- Cataloging
- Transcript
Art, politics and motorcycles: on the occasion of his 90th birthday, JOHN BERGER OR THE ART OF LOOKING is an intimate portrait of the writer and art-critic whose groundbreaking insights on seeing have shaped us for already five decades. His four-part BBC series WAYS OF SEEING opened a whole generation's eyes. Working on an astonishing range of topics and art-forms, he never lost his belief and lifelong interest in dialogues which over decades created the most unusual artistic collaborations. Realized as a portrait in works and collaborations, this creative documentary takes a different approach to biography, where John Berger leads us in his favorite role as the story teller through his ways of seeing of today.
Citation
Main credits
Berger, John (on-screen participant)
Dvořák, Cordelia (film director)
Deckert, Heino (film producer)
Saltzwedel, Daniel (film producer)
Other credits
Director of photograpy, Piotr Rosolowski; editor, Alfredo Castro; music, György Regály.
Distributor subjects
No distributor subjects provided.Keywords
WEBVTT
00:00:07.185 --> 00:00:13.301
[background noise]
00:00:17.272 --> 00:00:21.927
The removal of cataracts from the eyes
00:00:24.007 --> 00:00:26.574
is comparable with the removal
00:00:26.763 --> 00:00:31.381
of a particular form of forgetfulness.
00:00:33.670 --> 00:00:40.014
Your eyes begin to remember first times
00:00:41.352 --> 00:00:43.112
and it is in this sense
00:00:44.094 --> 00:00:47.541
that what they experienced
after the intervention
00:00:47.949 --> 00:00:51.650
is a kind of visual renaissance.
00:01:01.527 --> 00:01:06.669
The unstartling heterogeneousness
00:01:07.243 --> 00:01:11.556
of the existence has marvelously returned
00:01:17.032 --> 00:01:23.258
and the two eyes [?] now removed
00:01:25.163 --> 00:01:30.072
again and again register supplies.
00:01:31.454 --> 00:01:37.072
[music]
00:01:44.145 --> 00:01:48.072
[foreign language]
00:02:09.636 --> 00:02:12.981
Tomorrow it will be three weeks
after the operation.
00:02:16.632 --> 00:02:21.250
If I tried to sum up
the transformed experience of looking
00:02:22.676 --> 00:02:27.149
I\'d say it\'s like suddenly finding oneself
00:02:28.094 --> 00:02:31.520
in a scene painted by Vermeer.
00:02:34.290 --> 00:02:37.403
The surface of everything
you\'re looking at
00:02:38.305 --> 00:02:42.523
is covered with a dew of light.
00:02:54.509 --> 00:03:00.865
[background noise]
00:03:06.836 --> 00:03:12.749
[foreign language]
00:03:46.865 --> 00:03:50.661
I\'m in this storytelling imagination.
00:03:52.378 --> 00:03:58.887
[foreign language]
00:05:09.883 --> 00:05:11.687
[laughs]
00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:18.821
I had a dream
in which I was a strange dealer,
00:05:19.898 --> 00:05:23.418
a dealer in looks, or appearances.
00:05:24.989 --> 00:05:30.298
I collected and distributed them,
and in the dream,
00:05:30.989 --> 00:05:37.512
I had just discovered a secret,
I discovered it on my own, no help.
00:05:39.280 --> 00:05:43.170
The Secret was to get inside
00:05:43.941 --> 00:05:47.352
whatever I was looking at, get inside it.
00:05:53.367 --> 00:05:59.185
When I woke up from that dream,
I couldn\'t remember how it was done
00:06:01.396 --> 00:06:08.014
and I now no longer know
how to get inside things.
00:06:15.040 --> 00:06:18.647
I started writing art criticism,
how old was I?
00:06:18.836 --> 00:06:22.894
I was 25, 26
00:06:24.465 --> 00:06:31.447
and a great deal of my life
up to that moment had been involved
00:06:31.985 --> 00:06:37.723
with drawing with painting Kokoschka
as both a man and a painter
00:06:38.305 --> 00:06:40.850
has fascinated me for a long time.
00:06:41.330 --> 00:06:44.516
Somehow when you consider Picasso,
it is the spirit of the man
00:06:44.705 --> 00:06:48.530
rather than any single work,
which dominates and it\'s so striking.
00:06:49.243 --> 00:06:53.730
The act of looking for [?]
is a form of prayer,
00:06:55.069 --> 00:06:56.545
a way of grasping
00:06:56.880 --> 00:06:58.763
or glimpsing the absolute.
00:07:01.112 --> 00:07:06.145
Painting, drawing was something
that I thought I knew something about,
00:07:08.123 --> 00:07:13.527
and therefore the only experience
I had really was about looking.
00:07:14.356 --> 00:07:20.407
Looking and doing something on paper
or in three dimensions with what one saw.
00:07:20.727 --> 00:07:22.778
The interrogation of appearances.
00:07:24.443 --> 00:07:30.298
[foreign language]
00:07:30.494 --> 00:07:36.894
[foreign language]
00:07:54.756 --> 00:07:59.781
There was about 16, 17 maybe 18,
I don\'t know and you were in your...
00:08:00.385 --> 00:08:03.134
Yes, and that is-
00:08:03.323 --> 00:08:05.323
That\'s [foreign language]
00:08:05.490 --> 00:08:08.305
- I think it\'s a [foreign language]
- No, I think so too.
00:08:08.494 --> 00:08:11.949
- We look good, don\'t we?
- Very good, very good.
00:08:14.210 --> 00:08:20.763
Since she was a small kid, we used to look
at pictures reproductions together
00:08:22.450 --> 00:08:28.334
in books on postcards
and then we would chat about them.
00:08:28.523 --> 00:08:29.716
Exactly.
00:08:31.774 --> 00:08:36.974
Here this is about a little collection
of pictures
00:08:37.430 --> 00:08:41.978
that could come from our lives,
it\'s gone, Jackie.
00:08:42.254 --> 00:08:46.923
Exactly, good, you start.
00:08:53.403 --> 00:08:55.818
Do you feel
like that sometimes in the morning?
00:08:56.101 --> 00:08:58.189
[laughs]
00:09:04.087 --> 00:09:09.505
Not really, but I would love
to be able to plunge my hand
00:09:09.694 --> 00:09:13.018
in such luxurious hair,
00:09:14.545 --> 00:09:17.963
I wish I could, but no, I don\'t.
00:09:19.185 --> 00:09:23.323
Do you think that this could be the head
00:09:24.254 --> 00:09:26.858
that fits behind this?
00:09:28.436 --> 00:09:30.269
[laughs]
00:09:32.436 --> 00:09:35.716
Well, they\'re both paintings by Kobe,
00:09:39.141 --> 00:09:44.152
and the funny thing
is that looking at this one,
00:09:45.425 --> 00:09:48.123
which is called the origin of the world,
00:09:50.312 --> 00:09:53.243
you don\'t think about the woman\'s face,
00:09:53.927 --> 00:09:57.992
you don\'t think about the rest of her
at the same time,
00:09:58.712 --> 00:10:02.778
it\'s not sexually provocative.
00:10:05.360 --> 00:10:10.392
You\'re just in face of astounding
00:10:11.847 --> 00:10:13.767
always surprising reality.
00:10:14.785 --> 00:10:19.381
In that sense is it like a natural morte?
00:10:20.650 --> 00:10:23.090
Like a natural morte?
00:10:23.665 --> 00:10:24.807
No.
00:10:25.076 --> 00:10:27.454
That\'s the opposite of that your morte.
00:10:28.967 --> 00:10:32.029
We could call it the natural [?]
00:10:32.240 --> 00:10:33.723
[laughs]
00:10:40.385 --> 00:10:44.341
This is the first of four programs
in which I want to question
00:10:44.952 --> 00:10:49.156
some of the assumptions usually made
about the tradition of European painting.
00:10:50.407 --> 00:10:53.076
Filming this was a moment
of great tension for me
00:10:53.265 --> 00:10:56.996
because if John was going to screw it up
there was no way we could repeat it.
00:10:59.490 --> 00:11:04.232
This is where a lot of my old films
00:11:04.407 --> 00:11:07.709
and all this stuff is including,
00:11:07.927 --> 00:11:13.425
I think, the original film cans containing
00:11:13.629 --> 00:11:15.752
the cutting copy of Ways of Seeing.
00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:23.680
[foreign language]
00:11:25.803 --> 00:11:32.232
There it is,
Ways of Seeing programs 1 and 2
00:11:34.683 --> 00:11:36.065
on the old film.
00:11:36.261 --> 00:11:42.276
[foreign language]
00:11:45.847 --> 00:11:49.825
I think the first idea he had was to use
an archetype called European painting
00:11:50.014 --> 00:11:54.247
as a point of departure and deconstruct
the concept of national heritage.
00:11:54.472 --> 00:11:57.280
What did national heritage mean
when we talked about national heritage,
00:11:57.505 --> 00:12:00.167
when we really were talking
about the private wealth
00:12:00.356 --> 00:12:02.043
of enormous landowners.
00:12:02.334 --> 00:12:05.003
The process of seeing paintings
or seeing anything else
00:12:05.243 --> 00:12:08.494
is less spontaneous and natural
than we tend to believe.
00:12:09.709 --> 00:12:13.025
A large part of seeing
depends upon habit and convention.
00:12:14.756 --> 00:12:18.727
All the paintings of the tradition
used the convention of perspective
00:12:19.105 --> 00:12:21.069
which is unique to European art.
00:12:21.578 --> 00:12:24.305
I remember saying,
\"John, shouldn\'t we just say maybe,
00:12:24.509 --> 00:12:26.647
or perhaps, or something?\"
He said, \"No no.
00:12:26.836 --> 00:12:28.690
No, no.
You just got to say it.
00:12:28.880 --> 00:12:33.316
If you say it and somebody disagrees
then they\'re engaged.\"
00:12:33.992 --> 00:12:37.665
My perspective centers everything
on the eye of the beholder
00:12:38.152 --> 00:12:42.763
it is like a a beam from a lighthouse,
only instead of light traveling outwards,
00:12:43.483 --> 00:12:46.298
appearances travel in
and our tradition of art
00:12:46.538 --> 00:12:48.734
called those appearances reality.
00:12:50.050 --> 00:12:53.381
We tried a lot of experiments
and funnily enough most of them
00:12:53.570 --> 00:12:54.938
didn\'t work terribly well.
00:12:55.156 --> 00:12:59.534
One worked amazingly
when we had the Caravaggio.
00:12:59.752 --> 00:13:00.807
I think it\'s a man.
00:13:00.996 --> 00:13:02.800
I think it\'s a woman.
00:13:03.396 --> 00:13:04.814
There\'s no bristles.
00:13:05.076 --> 00:13:06.800
He hasn\'t got any bristles.
00:13:06.996 --> 00:13:08.414
He got a moustache even.
00:13:08.600 --> 00:13:10.327
He hasn\'t got any bristles.
00:13:11.440 --> 00:13:14.596
Not quite all, but most of the boys
thought that he was a man
00:13:14.930 --> 00:13:18.894
and most of the girls who thought
because she was not a man.
00:13:19.120 --> 00:13:20.909
You said she was [?].
00:13:21.330 --> 00:13:24.545
Because they were really looking
and really relating what they saw
00:13:24.734 --> 00:13:26.320
to their own experience.
00:13:26.669 --> 00:13:29.432
They recognized something
that most adults wouldn\'t.
00:13:29.620 --> 00:13:33.345
Without knowing the artist\'s name
let alone anything about Caravaggio’s life
00:13:33.650 --> 00:13:36.850
or the fact that he was a homosexual,
they immediately saw
00:13:37.141 --> 00:13:40.254
how sexually ambivalent
the principal figure was.
00:13:41.432 --> 00:13:46.000
Caravaggio,
I think he\'s my favorite painter.
00:13:46.981 --> 00:13:53.127
The paintings by other painters
which perhaps I prefer.
00:13:53.745 --> 00:13:58.196
As a figure, as a life,
00:14:03.592 --> 00:14:08.618
his life is my favorite life of a painter.
00:14:11.112 --> 00:14:12.465
Why?
00:14:13.672 --> 00:14:17.112
Because he was consistently a rebel.
00:14:17.912 --> 00:14:21.338
You cannot predict
the impact a series has.
00:14:22.894 --> 00:14:27.018
I don\'t think it occurred to John
and myself the effect the series
00:14:27.214 --> 00:14:30.160
was going to have
because it didn\'t certainly occur
00:14:30.392 --> 00:14:32.734
to the BBC that it might have any impact.
00:14:34.276 --> 00:14:37.003
To actually suggest
at the end of a television film
00:14:37.236 --> 00:14:38.923
be critical of what we\'re telling you.
00:14:39.112 --> 00:14:44.000
That was also just something
which was just so different.
00:14:44.414 --> 00:14:48.501
Remember that I am controlling
and using for my own purposes
00:14:48.872 --> 00:14:51.949
the means of reproduction needed
for these programs.
00:14:53.236 --> 00:14:57.170
The images may be like words
but there is no dialogue yet.
00:14:57.818 --> 00:14:59.643
You cannot reply to me.
00:15:01.396 --> 00:15:05.934
I hope you will consider what I arrange,
but be skeptical of it.
00:15:06.792 --> 00:15:12.698
From a very very early age,
really when I was a small kid
00:15:13.250 --> 00:15:14.814
in my first school,
00:15:18.836 --> 00:15:21.432
I was
00:15:25.789 --> 00:15:30.370
skeptical about the world
00:15:30.930 --> 00:15:33.105
and what was happening around me
00:15:36.014 --> 00:15:40.407
and so I became
00:15:40.654 --> 00:15:43.200
a conspirator against it.
00:15:46.101 --> 00:15:49.490
Then now I think
as soon as I’m really in contact
00:15:49.680 --> 00:15:52.458
with somebody,
whether I know them very well
00:15:52.654 --> 00:15:59.040
and love them or whether it\'s a stranger,
if there is a common feeling,
00:15:59.614 --> 00:16:02.349
I treat them as a fellow conspirator.
00:16:02.829 --> 00:16:05.760
As a an accomplice complicity.
00:16:07.192 --> 00:16:10.421
An accomplice and with a wink.
00:16:15.447 --> 00:16:19.672
I propose a conspiracy of orphans.
00:16:21.010 --> 00:16:27.541
We exchange winks, we reject hierarchies.
00:16:28.392 --> 00:16:29.978
All the hierarchies.
00:16:32.430 --> 00:16:35.214
We take the shit of the world for granted
00:16:36.421 --> 00:16:40.923
and we exchange stories about ways
00:16:41.141 --> 00:16:43.614
in which we nevertheless get by.
00:16:45.978 --> 00:16:48.683
We are impertinent.
00:16:50.429 --> 00:16:54.967
Yes, we are impertinent.
00:16:56.800 --> 00:16:59.265
I guess that I approach
00:17:00.043 --> 00:17:05.040
and chat up viewers and readers
00:17:06.363 --> 00:17:12.298
in the same way
as if you too were orphans.
00:17:15.280 --> 00:17:16.872
Get what I mean?
00:17:19.090 --> 00:17:23.592
I knocked the ball to him and I said,
\"How can we start?
00:17:23.898 --> 00:17:26.836
How should we start?\"
Then he said to me,
00:17:28.029 --> 00:17:31.585
the bang with the ball came back
and he said,
00:17:32.581 --> 00:17:36.734
\"Why don\'t you just send me a color?\"
I said, \"Okay, great.\"
00:17:38.123 --> 00:17:41.658
Then of course I put the phone down
and thought, \"What\'s he talking about?
00:17:41.869 --> 00:17:47.338
How am I going to do that?\"
Send him a color?
00:17:47.898 --> 00:17:52.160
Would I send him some powder,
I don\'t know, some colored powder.
00:17:52.356 --> 00:17:53.570
What would I do?
00:17:53.796 --> 00:17:58.647
[foreign language]
00:18:04.094 --> 00:18:05.978
I sent you this cadmium red.
00:18:10.181 --> 00:18:14.981
Here we have the very first letter I sent.
00:18:16.043 --> 00:18:19.934
Yesterday I went to a funeral someone
I didn\'t really know very well
00:18:20.283 --> 00:18:22.705
and during the service
before the cremation
00:18:23.120 --> 00:18:24.632
I was looking at the flowers.
00:18:24.858 --> 00:18:27.810
When I got home I was still thinking
about these flowers and I thought
00:18:28.036 --> 00:18:33.309
I posed myself a problem to try
and find the red color
00:18:33.549 --> 00:18:35.134
which I liked very much.
00:18:35.781 --> 00:18:38.974
I tried to identify
and I went to my watercolor box.
00:18:40.087 --> 00:18:43.236
For no better reason
than the memory of those flowers,
00:18:43.636 --> 00:18:45.447
I sent you this cadmium red.
00:18:45.978 --> 00:18:48.741
Then very soon
I got a letter back from him,
00:18:49.781 --> 00:18:53.352
\"Red is not usually an innocent color
00:18:55.272 --> 00:18:58.087
but the red you sent me is.
00:19:01.112 --> 00:19:03.301
It\'s the red of childhood,
00:19:04.196 --> 00:19:09.592
a pretend red or if you like,
00:19:10.625 --> 00:19:14.952
the red of young eyelids shut tight.\"
00:19:16.509 --> 00:19:20.378
It\'s like the color when you\'re a kid
when you shut your eyes
00:19:20.610 --> 00:19:23.912
and look up at the sky
and it\'s that color that red color
00:19:24.247 --> 00:19:26.014
with the blood in your eyelids.
00:19:26.560 --> 00:19:28.647
I thought, \"Gosh, that\'s amazing.\"
00:19:29.847 --> 00:19:32.429
Then, of course,
we went on from that where making
00:19:32.618 --> 00:19:35.832
and making these different letters
and replies.
00:19:37.869 --> 00:19:40.850
We didn\'t start off
with a proper list of colors,
00:19:41.040 --> 00:19:42.189
these the ones we\'re going to do.
00:19:42.378 --> 00:19:45.578
They\'re very much colors
that presented themselves to us.
00:19:47.440 --> 00:19:52.421
It was John\'s question to do
with Genevieve being pregnant,
00:19:52.610 --> 00:19:55.207
what color would you see inside her?
00:19:56.203 --> 00:20:00.240
The color I worked out or thought about
00:20:00.538 --> 00:20:05.912
was mother of Pearl and so look,
00:20:06.581 --> 00:20:08.363
there\'s the photo.
00:20:09.803 --> 00:20:12.770
Genevieve\'s... where is she on that?
00:20:12.981 --> 00:20:13.985
Genevieve there.
00:20:14.174 --> 00:20:18.756
This one little figure in the blue dress...
And John described this.
00:20:20.290 --> 00:20:22.705
The bay,
all the things leading to this figure.
00:20:24.516 --> 00:20:28.356
The world is spread out for her.
00:20:30.821 --> 00:20:32.938
The waters break.
00:20:34.370 --> 00:20:36.858
The bay opens.
00:20:37.934 --> 00:20:40.327
The sand is skin colored.
00:20:41.912 --> 00:20:45.120
The houses, wait, watching.
00:20:46.858 --> 00:20:50.814
I\'d name, that bay Hutua\'s bay.
00:20:52.763 --> 00:20:56.894
So conscious, does it make us aware
00:20:58.036 --> 00:21:01.745
of everything that is within, inside.
00:21:02.676 --> 00:21:08.407
Moving inside
that tiny figure of Genevieve.
00:21:12.312 --> 00:21:18.327
They were all things that came from
really just thinking about the show.
00:21:18.756 --> 00:21:23.563
I hadn\'t even looked at for...
Because I was writing about it to John,
00:21:23.860 --> 00:21:29.141
trying to make something interesting
and then I discovered things
00:21:29.374 --> 00:21:31.170
I hadn\'t seen at all.
00:21:32.109 --> 00:21:34.225
Now, don\'t you think it\'s John\'s son?
00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:35.614
Make me.
00:21:39.854 --> 00:21:41.723
- Johnny?
- No it\'s you.
00:21:41.992 --> 00:21:44.181
- It\'s not.
- It\'s you.
00:21:47.870 --> 00:21:49.505
No, no, no.
It\'s not me. No, no.
00:21:49.694 --> 00:21:51.156
- No?
- No, no, really, really.
00:21:51.340 --> 00:21:55.796
You are complete wrong. Look again.
It\'s really not me. Serious.
00:21:56.101 --> 00:22:02.712
[foreign language]
00:22:17.461 --> 00:22:21.592
Of all the things we\'ve done together,
books anyway,
00:22:24.043 --> 00:22:26.676
I think I\'m proudest of The Seventh Man.
00:22:29.723 --> 00:22:36.181
On one hand, it\'s a book
that we were incredibly precise about.
00:22:37.163 --> 00:22:40.603
Laying out every page,
considering every space,
00:22:40.843 --> 00:22:46.225
every juxtaposition of image,
seeing exactly where a poem should occur...
00:22:47.229 --> 00:22:52.087
And so we actually made something
with this maximum concentration,
00:22:52.930 --> 00:22:55.563
which in a certain sense
can be called aesthetic.
00:22:56.850 --> 00:23:02.109
At the same time,
the book when once it\'s out actually goes
00:23:02.298 --> 00:23:04.094
and to its target.
00:23:04.312 --> 00:23:08.509
That is to say,
not really principally to sociologists
00:23:09.127 --> 00:23:11.527
but to migrant workers themselves.
00:23:17.425 --> 00:23:21.985
[foreign language]
00:24:19.890 --> 00:24:23.512
What I appreciate in him
is, that he goes up and down.
00:24:25.243 --> 00:24:30.080
I would be tempted to say
like a woman sometimes, but it\'s wrong
00:24:30.320 --> 00:24:37.221
because it doesn\'t belong only to women
to be so expressive, so warm,
00:24:39.083 --> 00:24:40.887
but he\'s just outspoken.
00:24:46.392 --> 00:24:52.138
[foreign language]
00:24:59.127 --> 00:25:02.741
There are pictures of John as a young man
00:25:04.683 --> 00:25:08.734
like that one, where he\'s very strong
00:25:08.923 --> 00:25:14.320
and certain of himself and very positive,
00:25:15.025 --> 00:25:17.709
but it\'s more or less the public face
00:25:17.898 --> 00:25:19.658
he wants to give away.
00:25:20.203 --> 00:25:25.112
While in the last 10 years
I begin to catch on his face,
00:25:25.432 --> 00:25:28.240
all kinds of other feelings.
00:25:29.374 --> 00:25:35.490
Certain anxiety, also doubts
about some of his beliefs.
00:25:38.218 --> 00:25:43.272
Here is somebody else traveling and I know
that this painting counted a lot for you
00:25:43.461 --> 00:25:45.658
in your whole life.
00:25:46.232 --> 00:25:48.501
- Yes.
- Are we approaching motorbikes here?
00:25:51.010 --> 00:25:55.170
Yes.
00:25:55.898 --> 00:25:57.854
Here we are approaching motorbikes.
00:25:58.043 --> 00:26:04.843
Oh, incredibly and of course
it\'s by Rembrandt
00:26:05.549 --> 00:26:07.992
and it is called Polish Rider.
00:26:09.323 --> 00:26:14.240
Who he was and where he was...
And I don\'t think Rembrandt
00:26:14.436 --> 00:26:20.472
called it Polish Rider,
but if I was a manufacturer of motorbikes,
00:26:21.047 --> 00:26:24.567
- I would call one The Polish Rider.
- Yes.
00:26:24.750 --> 00:26:28.916
Use that for publicity. [laughter]
00:26:33.076 --> 00:26:35.861
[background noise]
00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:20.363
[motorbike vrooming]
00:27:25.469 --> 00:27:31.454
If you\'re going to survive riding a bike,
you have to be totally concentrated
00:27:32.043 --> 00:27:34.167
on the here and now.
00:27:34.429 --> 00:27:38.472
About everything observed
of the here and now.
00:27:38.821 --> 00:27:40.887
You don\'t think about the past.
You don\'t think about the future.
00:27:41.076 --> 00:27:43.738
You don\'t have memories,
you don\'t have expectations
00:27:44.029 --> 00:27:47.716
except the immediate ones
which have to be negotiated.
00:27:48.385 --> 00:27:51.403
This concentration on the here and now
00:27:52.400 --> 00:27:58.349
is curiously calming, because well,
00:27:58.538 --> 00:28:00.392
there you are alive,
00:28:00.785 --> 00:28:07.258
you\'re moving
and you notice what you\'re moving through
00:28:07.440 --> 00:28:09.229
and that\'s all that exists.
00:28:17.098 --> 00:28:24.036
[foreign language]
00:28:40.945 --> 00:28:45.323
[motorbike vrooming]
00:28:45.563 --> 00:28:51.229
[background noise]
00:28:57.861 --> 00:29:01.941
When my father moved out of London,
out of England... a few things I know
00:29:02.130 --> 00:29:06.618
is just from what I heard of him
but at first that he never felt at home
00:29:06.814 --> 00:29:12.123
in England and also politically
it\'s a story of England
00:29:12.312 --> 00:29:18.385
and two years of torture
and all the conservatism going on there.
00:29:19.934 --> 00:29:20.989
He couldn\'t.
00:29:21.178 --> 00:29:25.956
He simply... as a wall, rather a grey,
sad wall,
00:29:26.632 --> 00:29:32.378
and I think at that time for him France,
in general, with it\'s his history
00:29:32.625 --> 00:29:37.316
and its politics, at least at that time,
was quite the opposite.
00:29:37.716 --> 00:29:43.345
[birds chirping]
00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:57.832
[background noise]
00:30:07.490 --> 00:30:09.185
I think he says that he never felt
00:30:09.389 --> 00:30:15.978
really at home anywhere
but probably here more than anywhere else
00:30:16.792 --> 00:30:20.516
because of his relations
with the people here
00:30:20.720 --> 00:30:24.269
which was mostly based upon their work.
00:30:25.141 --> 00:30:30.516
[background noise]
00:30:43.941 --> 00:30:49.061
[foreign language]
00:31:12.538 --> 00:31:18.283
When he had this project of writing
this strategy about the peasant community
00:31:18.640 --> 00:31:22.065
and this disappearing way of living,
00:31:23.338 --> 00:31:26.000
he started to basically to offer help
00:31:26.196 --> 00:31:31.454
to those people and learn from them.
00:31:31.643 --> 00:31:34.967
Throughout this help he was trying
00:31:35.185 --> 00:31:39.200
to provide in his unexperimented way
00:31:39.869 --> 00:31:44.101
because those people
are so rooted with land, the place,
00:31:44.378 --> 00:31:49.752
the time, the season,
everything I think that\'s maybe made him
00:31:54.305 --> 00:31:57.600
or it allowed him to have some roots here.
00:32:08.916 --> 00:32:14.836
[background noise]
00:32:23.869 --> 00:32:28.138
I was looking at that time for a piece
that I was going to make
00:32:29.025 --> 00:32:32.618
and a friend of mine said
\"Oh, but you remember
00:32:32.814 --> 00:32:37.440
what John wrote in Pigeth, do you remember
the three lives of Lucy Cabral?\"
00:32:38.669 --> 00:32:42.145
I wrote to John and said,
\"Would you consider letting me
00:32:42.778 --> 00:32:46.734
make this for the stage?\"
John being John said,
00:32:46.923 --> 00:32:50.749
\"Well, of course, well, the only payment
I would require
00:32:51.381 --> 00:32:54.880
is if I could come and watch you work
at some point.\"
00:32:55.629 --> 00:32:58.945
Then I went up to visit him
for the first time in the mountains
00:32:59.134 --> 00:33:01.723
with my designer
00:33:04.647 --> 00:33:09.054
and we walked with John
through the mountains and he showed us
00:33:09.243 --> 00:33:12.952
the very places
which had been inspirational to him
00:33:13.141 --> 00:33:15.447
in making, Lucy Cabral.
00:33:16.109 --> 00:33:20.232
That really started what became
a very deep friendship
00:33:22.094 --> 00:33:27.069
and so as a consequence
we\'ve created many pieces together.
00:33:27.425 --> 00:33:31.381
The story of Lucy Cabral,
there was really a woman
00:33:31.912 --> 00:33:37.403
and most of the characters in the story
are people I came to know quite closely
00:33:38.429 --> 00:33:41.527
and now to see those lives
00:33:41.840 --> 00:33:46.138
transported here and actually speaking
00:33:46.472 --> 00:33:52.930
to thousands of people who are so far away
from the life of peasants
00:33:53.120 --> 00:33:59.970
in mountain villages is still something
which is very mysterious to me.
00:34:02.269 --> 00:34:08.050
[foreign language]
00:34:13.127 --> 00:34:18.981
Lucy Cabral who was known
as the Cock Cakry is dead.
00:34:24.996 --> 00:34:29.825
In the writing of into their labors,
he holds the generations
00:34:30.749 --> 00:34:35.098
of all these people who are nameless
and who had no voice
00:34:35.316 --> 00:34:38.305
who don\'t exist really
for they\'ve disappeared.
00:34:38.952 --> 00:34:40.443
He brings them to life.
00:34:43.621 --> 00:34:45.243
It\'s a girl.
00:34:46.436 --> 00:34:48.640
Generations of labor,
00:34:49.076 --> 00:34:53.396
a particularly precarious form
00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:59.469
of very, very brutal agriculture.
00:35:08.545 --> 00:35:12.269
I might say well, what if we do this
and we change it and develop it
00:35:12.574 --> 00:35:14.807
or I might add something
or I\'d found something
00:35:14.996 --> 00:35:17.927
or we missed something
and I would invent something else.
00:35:18.472 --> 00:35:22.647
Whatever I suggested
he would not only consider it
00:35:23.432 --> 00:35:26.567
or be open to it.
He would be immediately interested.
00:35:27.876 --> 00:35:32.792
My father, mother, brothers, sisters,
00:35:33.309 --> 00:35:36.458
cows, horses, rabbits, chickens, goats,
00:35:36.749 --> 00:35:38.370
all have gone
00:35:42.436 --> 00:35:44.029
and Lucy Cabral.
00:35:46.116 --> 00:35:49.003
- Is dead.
- Is dead.
00:35:50.021 --> 00:35:51.418
I say that.
00:35:51.781 --> 00:35:54.727
I do not altogether believe it.
00:35:55.258 --> 00:35:57.207
I don\'t altogether believe it.
00:35:57.410 --> 00:35:59.585
Sometimes it seems to me-
00:35:59.774 --> 00:36:04.458
That I am nearing the edge of the forest,
I will never again be 16
00:36:05.694 --> 00:36:09.432
and if I am to leave the forest
it will be on the far side.
00:36:09.825 --> 00:36:11.767
It will be on the far side.
00:36:12.014 --> 00:36:14.770
Do I feel this because I\'m old and tired?
00:36:15.745 --> 00:36:17.032
I doubt it-
00:36:17.323 --> 00:36:21.178
but there are moments
when I see something different
00:36:22.370 --> 00:36:25.658
Moments when a blue sky
00:36:28.130 --> 00:36:30.967
reminds me of Lucy Cabral.
00:36:39.512 --> 00:36:43.512
For myself, he was my father
and not John Berger the writer.
00:36:44.276 --> 00:36:50.894
I didn\'t really notice almost
what my father was doing
00:36:51.170 --> 00:36:54.341
or I didn\'t pay any attention anyway.
00:36:55.585 --> 00:37:01.032
I didn\'t read what he wrote
until very, very late.
00:37:03.112 --> 00:37:08.967
I think the people here
and the peasants the fact that my father
00:37:09.156 --> 00:37:15.163
was a writer
and even if he was writing about them
00:37:16.007 --> 00:37:17.425
they knew that.
00:37:20.763 --> 00:37:25.760
To consider that as a real work
that\'s a bit too much for them.
00:37:33.723 --> 00:37:39.556
A week ago I cleared out
and buried the years shit,
00:37:41.069 --> 00:37:45.381
the shit of my family and of our friends
who visit us,
00:37:46.807 --> 00:37:48.785
has to be done once a year,
00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:54.501
cow and horse dung,
they\'re relatively agreeable.
00:37:55.512 --> 00:37:58.050
You could even become nostalgic
about them,
00:37:59.905 --> 00:38:03.054
they smell of fermented grain
00:38:04.225 --> 00:38:09.883
and somewhere on the far side
of their smell there\'s hay and glass.
00:38:12.618 --> 00:38:16.792
Chicken shit disagreeable
and lasts of throat
00:38:17.709 --> 00:38:20.130
because the quality of ammonia in it.
00:38:23.418 --> 00:38:26.560
Pig and human excrete, however,
00:38:26.945 --> 00:38:30.647
smell the worst because men and pigs
00:38:32.050 --> 00:38:36.996
are carnivorous
and their appetites are indiscriminant.
00:38:40.007 --> 00:38:44.552
Whilst shoveling,
images of paradise coming into my mind
00:38:48.269 --> 00:38:52.763
but from where I dug
the whole a lilac tree
00:38:52.974 --> 00:38:54.778
is coming into flower.
00:38:55.934 --> 00:38:58.669
I can smell the lilac through the sheet,
00:39:00.494 --> 00:39:03.978
It smells a mint mixed
00:39:04.174 --> 00:39:10.305
with a lot of honey
and this perfume takes me back
00:39:10.880 --> 00:39:13.287
to my very early childhood,
00:39:15.243 --> 00:39:18.210
to the first garden I ever knew
00:39:19.025 --> 00:39:23.229
from long before either lilac
00:39:23.970 --> 00:39:26.450
or shit a name.
00:39:45.716 --> 00:39:47.949
My mother, Beverly, was...
00:39:48.872 --> 00:39:55.650
Played a great role in my father\'s work
00:39:56.770 --> 00:40:00.152
simply because she did everything else
from writing.
00:40:00.690 --> 00:40:07.476
She took care of everything
which was needed to be done for my father
00:40:07.665 --> 00:40:11.905
to be able just to concentrate on writing.
00:40:16.909 --> 00:40:23.505
That goes from typing what he wrote
because he writes by hand,
00:40:24.007 --> 00:40:29.643
sending it out, doing all the relation
with the publishers, newspapers,
00:40:30.916 --> 00:40:37.636
creating the archive gradually,
doing his accounting, his taxes.
00:40:43.003 --> 00:40:48.610
She did that out of...
Not only out of love for him, of course,
00:40:50.189 --> 00:40:53.898
but I think because both shared
the same belief.
00:40:54.843 --> 00:40:59.141
The belief that doing that was worth it,
00:40:59.410 --> 00:41:01.403
that it brought something
00:41:01.621 --> 00:41:04.087
which was needed into the world.
00:41:06.618 --> 00:41:10.763
She was the first one
with whom he shared what he wrote,
00:41:11.141 --> 00:41:15.963
and always, when he was writing,
he was awaiting her response.
00:41:18.254 --> 00:41:20.683
They had this very strong complicity.
00:41:22.087 --> 00:41:25.054
My father wrote his dedication to her;
00:41:25.330 --> 00:41:29.192
\"To Beverley, mistress of each page.\"
00:41:30.538 --> 00:41:33.912
He showed it to her
when she was in the bed,
00:41:34.567 --> 00:41:40.261
the bed where she died,
just next door, and that made her
00:41:40.450 --> 00:41:42.865
very happy to see the dedication.
00:41:44.901 --> 00:41:49.621
Since Beverley is gone my father now
mostly lives in Paris
00:41:50.429 --> 00:41:52.770
but we\'re in very close contact.
00:41:53.738 --> 00:41:55.141
There\'s many ways
00:41:55.490 --> 00:41:59.010
by which we share what we\'re doing.
00:41:59.978 --> 00:42:04.501
[foreign language]
00:42:18.116 --> 00:42:20.050
There, this is a present for you.
00:42:22.181 --> 00:42:23.563
I\'ll show you.
00:42:26.334 --> 00:42:27.556
Oh.
00:42:28.820 --> 00:42:31.570
[foreign language]
00:42:31.847 --> 00:42:32.974
Wow.
00:42:33.163 --> 00:42:37.134
[foreign language]
00:42:37.854 --> 00:42:40.603
Gosh, this is beautiful.
00:42:43.621 --> 00:42:48.814
[foreign language]
00:42:53.640 --> 00:42:58.945
- I think he\'s going upstream the river.
- Yes. [laughs]. Exactly. Exactly.
00:42:59.483 --> 00:43:03.185
[foreign language]
00:43:57.883 --> 00:43:59.061
Okay.
00:44:03.190 --> 00:44:06.545
It was hot, perhaps 28 degrees centigrade.
00:44:07.236 --> 00:44:10.123
It was the end of the month of May.
00:44:12.029 --> 00:44:15.461
An old woman with an umbrella
was sitting very still
00:44:15.978 --> 00:44:17.956
on one of the park benches.
00:44:20.065 --> 00:44:24.247
She had the kind of stillness
that draws attention to itself.
00:44:26.138 --> 00:44:28.007
To whom was it addressed?
00:44:28.414 --> 00:44:34.225
Abruptly, abruptly, as I was asking myself
this question, she got to her feet,
00:44:34.523 --> 00:44:39.578
turned, and using her umbrella
like a walking stick came towards me.
00:44:40.698 --> 00:44:45.207
I recognized her walk long
before I could see her face.
00:44:46.116 --> 00:44:48.996
The walk of somebody
already looking forward
00:44:49.185 --> 00:44:51.425
to a living and sitting down.
00:44:53.090 --> 00:44:54.392
It was my mother.
00:44:57.301 --> 00:45:01.963
\"All my books have been about you,\"
I suddenly say.
00:45:03.250 --> 00:45:08.130
\"Books are also about language,
and language for me is inseparable
00:45:08.320 --> 00:45:09.941
from your voice, mother\".
00:45:10.363 --> 00:45:11.483
\"Nonsense.
00:45:11.890 --> 00:45:16.240
Maybe you wrote them so I should be there,
keeping you company, and I was.
00:45:17.410 --> 00:45:19.970
Yet they were about everything
in the world but me.
00:45:20.676 --> 00:45:24.821
I\'ve had to wait until now,
until you\'re an old man in Lisboa,
00:45:25.629 --> 00:45:29.832
for you to be writing
this very short story about me.\"
00:45:30.618 --> 00:45:36.516
[foreign language]
00:46:31.410 --> 00:46:34.763
Commonly of death you said that the living
00:46:35.898 --> 00:46:39.185
are at the core of the dead.
00:46:39.490 --> 00:46:45.389
They surround us and they depend on us,
like the passage that you read
00:46:45.745 --> 00:46:48.901
where you meet your mother in Lisbon.
00:46:51.672 --> 00:46:55.476
No, I follow what you mean,
and maybe I suggest that,
00:46:55.660 --> 00:46:59.694
but it\'s not really quite what I mean.
It\'s rather more the other way round.
00:47:03.098 --> 00:47:07.563
It is that we need the dead
00:47:17.294 --> 00:47:19.345
to recognize ourselves.
00:47:19.927 --> 00:47:23.672
In any way, the dead are essential to us.
00:47:29.025 --> 00:47:35.192
That recognition begins
with their company in mortality.
00:47:37.636 --> 00:47:39.694
Not immortality, mortality.
00:47:41.530 --> 00:47:44.945
Paul, it\'s a very curious painting.
00:47:45.150 --> 00:47:47.789
- Isn\'t it.
- Very, very curious.
00:47:49.563 --> 00:47:51.898
Do you have anything to tell me
about this man?
00:47:53.410 --> 00:47:56.261
I think the window is his life
00:47:58.705 --> 00:48:01.745
and he\'s trapped in it,
00:48:03.083 --> 00:48:06.610
maybe wandering what\'s outside.
00:48:10.007 --> 00:48:11.905
When he shuts his eyes,
00:48:14.007 --> 00:48:18.152
the window will vanish.
00:48:38.320 --> 00:48:41.149
What does he tell you about himself?
00:48:41.505 --> 00:48:43.461
- What does he tell me?
- Yes.
00:48:43.956 --> 00:48:47.229
For some reason he tells me that,
and I\'ll tell you why.
00:48:48.145 --> 00:48:52.261
Because he actually looks like you
and always made me think of you.
00:48:54.523 --> 00:48:56.029
There\'s something there too.
00:48:56.298 --> 00:48:58.698
Well, I mean, that\'s too flattering.
00:48:59.820 --> 00:49:02.356
- His scepticism-
- Yes.
00:49:03.163 --> 00:49:05.294
Which is never cynical,
00:49:06.829 --> 00:49:10.829
is very close to me.
00:49:12.065 --> 00:49:15.294
You know, this is not to claim
anything for myself,
00:49:15.927 --> 00:49:21.069
but that is really the image
of the storyteller.
00:49:21.607 --> 00:49:24.225
- Yes.
- Not the novelist.
00:49:26.109 --> 00:49:29.054
Not the fashionable literary creator,
00:49:30.269 --> 00:49:33.338
but the guy, often nomadic,
00:49:34.320 --> 00:49:40.909
who goes from place to place
and tells stories that he has lived,
00:49:41.469 --> 00:49:43.112
or that he is making up.
00:49:43.527 --> 00:49:45.876
That idea of a traveller,
00:49:47.978 --> 00:49:53.861
that idea of somebody
00:49:54.050 --> 00:49:57.789
who is completely free from institutions,
00:49:59.687 --> 00:50:02.909
is something also which is contained
00:50:03.098 --> 00:50:05.003
for me in this storyteller.
00:50:06.880 --> 00:50:11.069
With modesty, I tried to be myself.
00:50:18.669 --> 00:50:22.400
I do mostly painting and my father
mainly draws
00:50:22.661 --> 00:50:28.843
but the reason for that for him
is that it did paint
00:50:29.236 --> 00:50:32.938
when he was much younger
and he went to art school
00:50:33.665 --> 00:50:37.694
and then he wanted to become a painter
and he started to work as a painter.
00:50:38.989 --> 00:50:45.134
From what he says, at some point he felt
the urge to write more important,
00:50:45.323 --> 00:50:51.367
more politically,
historically important at that point.
00:51:02.094 --> 00:51:03.752
He kept on drawing.
00:51:04.821 --> 00:51:06.385
It\'s a way of listening.
00:51:06.698 --> 00:51:11.992
It\'s a way of understanding,
discovering the visible.
00:51:15.869 --> 00:51:22.480
I think that\'s why in the last years,
my father has done a lot of drawings
00:51:22.727 --> 00:51:27.650
of very simple things
like such as flowers
00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:32.698
or mainly subjects coming from nature.
00:51:34.538 --> 00:51:38.407
Deary Steve,
in answer to your last letter,
00:51:39.301 --> 00:51:42.167
I send two postcards.
00:51:43.883 --> 00:51:47.330
One is a photo of a Terracotta
00:51:47.796 --> 00:51:52.480
by Della Rubbia and the second
00:51:53.287 --> 00:51:58.545
is a sketch by me,
what I call a text of a white rose
00:51:58.996 --> 00:52:00.370
from the garden.
00:52:02.821 --> 00:52:06.981
I noticed that he had certain curious echo
00:52:08.210 --> 00:52:10.036
with the photo of the Madonna,
00:52:12.116 --> 00:52:14.763
something a little similar
in mood and rhythm.
00:52:14.952 --> 00:52:19.949
No, you see neighbors on the same table.
00:52:20.880 --> 00:52:26.858
That\'s all and the rose
doesn\'t offer constellation
00:52:27.803 --> 00:52:33.643
but resists by itself,
the cruelty of life.
00:52:36.014 --> 00:52:41.854
[music]
00:53:08.843 --> 00:53:14.414
During the last week,
I\'ve been drawing mostly flowers.
00:53:19.570 --> 00:53:21.694
I\'ve been asking myself,
00:53:22.334 --> 00:53:26.523
with a natural forms, a tree, a cloud,
00:53:27.745 --> 00:53:31.578
and with her a stone,
a fly can be looked at
00:53:31.963 --> 00:53:35.207
and perceived as messages.
00:53:36.196 --> 00:53:40.385
Messages, it goes without saying,
which can never be verbalized
00:53:40.952 --> 00:53:44.509
and are not particularly addressed to us.
00:53:47.476 --> 00:53:54.058
Is it possible to read
natural appearances as texts?
00:54:01.978 --> 00:54:05.592
Well, that would be a bit of fun
amongst all the potential.
00:54:05.883 --> 00:54:08.705
[laughter]
00:54:08.894 --> 00:54:11.229
- Why don\'t you have some wine.
- Yes, we have.
00:54:11.410 --> 00:54:12.938
Or some whiskey.
00:54:14.152 --> 00:54:18.269
[crosstalk]
00:54:18.465 --> 00:54:19.650
Wonderful.
00:54:19.840 --> 00:54:26.116
It\'s incredible. [laughter]
Distributor: Deckert Distribution
Length: 55 minutes
Date: 2016
Genre: Expository
Language: English; French; German / English subtitles
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
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