Ways of Seeing

The countryside around the Po delta is dotted with abandoned houses and farmhouses. The landscape appears desertic, almost humanless. Some people shares stories about their bond with the land while the italian writer Gianni Celati documents the tragedy and the loss of values in this new landscape of desolation, with a superb narrative style.

12 August 2002 is the date which was printed on every shot in this film by the memory of the camera. On that day a huge tower which disrupted the north wing of an abandoned castle was torn down, floor by floor. The film is a record of the methodical disruption of this building by inhuman and all-powerful machines. The voice-over consists of a phone call by the author John Berger (1926), who has written numerous and radical opinion pieces in favour of the people of Palestine.

A look at the lives of several men and women in their 30s as they confront the slim gains of the "revolutionary" sixties. Max, a dissatisfied copy editor; Myriam, a redhead into tantric sex; and Marie, a supermarket checker who gives unauthorized discounts to the elderly, search for renewed meaning on a communal farm. The title character, a six-year-old child, is the carrier of their hopes for the future.

Pierre and Paul, journalist and writer respectively, team up to write a screenplay based on the real story of a young woman accused by her uncle of trying to kill him. They decide to meet her.

This "Play on One" story depicts Jack and his farming family in West Wales. They have built up their dairy herd with vast loans and are then told they must cut back on milk production and slaughter some of the herd. The community launches a campaign against the quotas, but Jack takes the law into his own hands.

Documentary on the construction of Chandigarh, the new capital of the Indian Punjab region, planned by Albert Mayer and Swiss architect Le Corbusier.

A young Swiss couple, Vincent and Françoise, plan to leave Geneva and settle in Africa: a friend of theirs living in Algeria promises to give them a job there.

Paul is married, a successful engineer, and a conservative candidate in an upcoming local election. He falls in love with Adriana, a café waitress from Italy. Paul's party is very critical of foreign labour and wants to keep Switzerland to the Swiss. Where Paul falls deeper and deeper into the relationship and is ready to leave his wife, Adriana feels the social pressure growing and has to make her own decision.

A series of television plays, some original, some based on pre-existing plays or novels.

Film Essay based on “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos” by John Berger.

A group of individuals are stranded at a small island airport when the flight from the mainland is delayed. At that moment, a stranger appears and begins telling the story of a summer romance in Venice.

Taşkafa is a real dog and also a legend on the streets of Istanbul. John Berger begins Taşkafa’s story, reading from his novel, King, the story of the disappearance of a community told from a dog’s perspective. The area’s ordinary people – taxi drivers, shopkeepers, street traders – care deeply about the welfare of the city’s street dogs and they tell us stories about Taşkafa and their other canine neighbours. The animals are a symbol of community living, where people (and dogs) look out for each other, but this is a community in transition; one from which dogs are starting to be expelled. Eccentric, amusing and very warm, the film is a powerful indictment of the impact of global politics and the economic appropriation of public space but, even more, it is a tribute to both the spirit of resistance and to city life that can accommodate people and dogs together.

In this programme John Berger talks about Zola's novel 'Germinal' and illustrates his subject with extensive use of film of Creswell and its colliery.

A few hours spent together give a young woman and an older man a new perspective on life.

They're young, unemployed and on the march - from Glasgow, Liverpool and Swansea to London.

“Parting Shots from Animals” was inspired by essays by John Berger and developed in collaboration with Chris Rawlence. Shot entirely in the UK, it consists of a diverse series of arresting ‘films within a film’, each presented as if made about us from the perspective of the animals whose lives we may appear to celebrate, but continue to exploit and to destroy. While John Berger doesn’t appear in the film and wasn’t directly involved in it’s making, he narrates to great effect the text he co-wrote to accompany the film’s provocative opening sequence.