| Naeem Mohaiemen on Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:40:02 +0200 (CEST) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
| <nettime-ann> NEW YORK: Ways Of Seeing John Berger |
. If in NY, this is worth checking out. -N ############################### WAYS OF SEEING JOHN BERGER A DAY-LONG SERIES OF SCREENINGS DEVOTED TO JOHN BERGER'S TV AND FILM WORK Great Theatre, 19 University Place Friday 10 October 2008 Few artists alive today have changed the way in which people imagine, view and think about the world around them more than John Berger. Born in 1926, this indefatigable poet, art critic, essayist, poet, Booker Prize-winning novelist and theatrical director has produced an enormous and ceaselessly exploratory body of work - about landscape, labour, memory, photography, painting, time, the Palestinian struggle - that appeals directly to both the intellect and to the heart. It is impossible to do justice to the range and impact of his creative achievements. WAYS OF SEEING (1972), his examination of the covert ideologies that underpin Western cultural aesthetics so revolutionized the study of art history that one critic has likened it to "Mao's Little Red Book for a generation of art students". A SEVENTH MAN (1975), an extraordinarily prophetic and resonant prose poem-cum-photo essay on the topic of European guest workers, correctly identified migration as one of the most pressing subjects in contemporary society. A FORTUNATE MAN (1967) and AND OUR FACES, MY HEART, BRIEF AS PHOTOS (1982) are just two of his books whose artful prefigure the hybrid forms of creative non-fiction associated in recent years with the likes of Ryszard Kapuscinski, WG Sebald and Eduardo Galeano. Always, in these works as well as in his many collaborations with artists such as Anne Michaels, Michael Ondaatje, Mike Dibb and Gavin Bryars, he has sought to illuminate what novelist Geoff Dyer calls "the enduring mystery of great art and the lived experience of the oppressed." This mystery, whose evocation has also been central to the creative and intellectual projects of his many admirers, among them Arundhati Roy and the late Edward Said, led Susan Sontag to describe him as "peerless; not since Lawrence has there been a writer who offers such attentiveness to the sensual world with responsiveness to the imperatives of conscience.' WAYS OF SEEING JOHN BERGER offers a very rare opportunity – free of charge, and open to the public as well as to members of NYU - to see a cross-selection of Berger's television and film work, much of it unknown to American audiences. __________ PROVISIONAL SCREENING SCHEDULE: 9am – A TELLING EYE (1994), dir. Mike Dibb, 60 min 10am – ONCE UPON A TIME (1983), dir. Mike Dibb, 52 min 11am – PIG EARTH (1979), dir. Mike Dibb, 50 min 12pm – PARTING SHOTS FROM ANIMALS (1980), dir. Mike Dibb, 60 min 1pm – ANOTHER WAY OF TELLING (1989), dir. John Christie, 120 min 2.45pm – JONAH WHO WILL BE 25 IN THE YEAR 2000 (1976), dir. Alain Tanner, 120 min 4.45pm – A TRIBUTE TO GHASSAN KANAFANI (2008), dir. Perry Ogden, 15 min ___________ BRIEF FILM SYNOPSIS: * A TELLING EYE – documentary tracing the development of Berger's work for television * ONCE UPON A TIME – spellbinding meditation on the relationship between art, time and storytelling * PIG EARTH - highly acclaimed film about French peasantry made with Swiss photographer Jean Mohr * PARTING SHOTS FROM ANIMALS – innovative documentary essay about the relationship between human beings and the animal world * ANOTHER WAY OF TELLING – complete four-part series exploring the nature and potential of the photographic image * JONAH WHO WILL BE 25 IN THE YEAR 2000 – Alain Tanner directs this witty, moving examination, scripted by Berger, of eight characters struggling to keep alive the dream of 1968 * A TRIBUTE TO GHASSAN KANAFANI – deeply affecting reading of a short story written by the distinguished Palestinian author assassinated by Mossad in 1972 __________ Presented by the Colloquium for Unpopular Culture – with special thanks to John Berger, Alexandra Chang, John Christie, Mike Dibb, Gareth Evans _______________________________________________ nettime-ann mailing list [email protected] http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ann