Documentary

John Berger is a storyteller, essayist, novelist, screenwriter, dramatist and critic, whose body of work embodies his concern for, in Geoff Dyer’s words, “the enduring mystery of great art and the lived experience of the oppressed.”

He is one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years, who has explored the relationships between the individual and society, culture and politics and experience and expression in a series of novels, book works, essays, plays, films, photographic collaborations and performances, unmatched in their diversity, ambition and reach. His television series and book Ways of Seeing revolutionized the way that Fine Art is read and understood, while his engagement with European peasantry and migration in the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours and A Seventh Man stand as models of empathy and insight.

John Berger in conversation with Michael Silverblatt at Berger’s home, a working farm, in Quincy, Mieussy, France, October 2002. Silverblatt is the host of the radio interview program, Bookworm.Read More »

Quote:
Two women, one house. An intimate story about a Pole and a German placed by war on enemy sides and their parallel lives accidentally brought together.

The film reflects on the concepts of invaders, victim, guilt and forgiveness. It confronts different experiences and their paradoxical similarities. It deals with the controversial subject of the post-war accountings.

The visual narration is flowing, guided by memories and archives. Traditional documentation confronts experimental use of archival footage in the cinematic impression about displacement.Read More »

““Somebody dies,” says John Berger. “It’s not just a question of tact that one then says, well, perhaps it is possible to tell that story,” but “it’s because, after that death, one can read that life. The life becomes readable.” His interlocutor, a certain Susan Sontag, interjects: “A person who dies at 37 is not the same as a person who dies at 77.” True, he replies, “but it can be somebody who dies at 90. The life becomes readable to the storyteller, to the writer. Then she or he can begin to write.” Berger, the consummate storyteller as well as thinker about stories, left behind these and millions of other memorable words, spoken and written, when he yesterday passed away at age 90 himself.Read More »

Description: Those familiar with van der Keuken’s films are aware of his extraordinary capacity to observe with a camera, to make the everyday magical and to slowly reveal the marvelous complexity of individuals’ lives. In his captivating new short, the delightful van der Keuken focuses on photography, in particular the extraordinary figure of a Chinese immigrant portrait photographer. A man of great authority, To Sang poses his various clients, all of whom work on the same street, with a precise sense of what constitutes a good photograph. He “directs” his clients into old- fashioned poses with a deft series of gestures: a Pakistani daughter stands between her visiting mother and father, a Kurdish son with his parents, a Surinamese travel agent sits alone. For van der Keuken, these photographs are “dream images,” more revealing of illusions and role-playing than reality. To Sang Fotostudio is not only a reflexive meditation on what an image is but also a complex portrait of a colorful, diverse neighborhood.Read More »

Quote:
The coronation of Queen Beatrix on the eve of May Day in 1980 provides a salient point of departure for Johan van der Keuken’s The Way South, a cultural interrogation into the intertwined sociopolitical landscape of immigration, dislocation, underprivilege, and class division. Continuing on the prevailing theme of economic disparity between the continental north and south (in such essay films as Diary, The White Castle, and the The New Ice Age), van der Keuken encounters his first destination within a short distance from his home in Amsterdam, where a unused office building on Kinker Street has been converted to a communal squat by activists (who see their action as a pragmatic solution to the affordable housing shortage by making use of existing real estate that would otherwise remain unoccupied).Read More »

Quote:
Each day, a man must work around the clock to produce and acquire bread: throwing the seeds into earth, helping the breeding of the corn, the corn’s recolt, transport to the mills, manipulation of the flour into actual bread, transport to a variety of locations and consumers.Read More »

Based on the book of The Shadow World, this feature length documentary is an investigation into the multi-billion dollar international arms trade.Read More »

Quote:
There’s little doubt that, for the serious cinephile, the home video event of this fall will be the the release of Jacques Rivette’s magnum opus OUT 1 (1971) on blu-ray and DVD in three territories: Carlotta Films and Carlotta US will kick off on November 18 in France and the USA respectively, with Arrow Films in the UK following suit on November 30. All three dual-format editions will feature a brand-new Fiction Factory documentary: THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS: JACQUES RIVETTE’S »OUT 1« REVISITED, conceived and directed by Robert Fischer and Wilfried Reichart.Read More »

official site wrote:
Four couples struggle on the edge of mother Europe. In countries troubled by economic and social crises they stumble through life with charme, sex and plenty of passion. A movie about the politics of love. In Sevilla JUAN, 21, and CARO, 23, experience the wonder of a young love. However, Juan is without a plan for the life that lies ahead of him and she desperately needs one. SIOBHAN, aged 28, and TERRY, 23, live in Dublin. When they first met they have fallen for love and heroin like other young habitants of this cold weathered town. But now sober for some time, on their way to lead a common life, their passion seems to disappear. In Tallinn, close to the northeastern border of Europe, VERONIKA, a 29 year old go-go dancer, and her partner HARRI, 31, find themselves caught up in the toil of a patchwork family. Her oldest son proves to be a challenge for Veronikas confidence in Harri. She wants him to accept Artur as his own. Meanwhile in Thessaloniki, Greece, PENNY, 23, is about to leave her longtime lover NIKO, 33, to go to work in Italy. But how do you leave someone who loves you too much?Read More »