John Berger made numerous collaborative television programmes, documentaries and features across a vast array of subjects. This programme features his films on photography, our complex relationship with animals, time, mining, Gaza and the street dogs of Istanbul, with introductions by several of the film-makers.
11.00 Once Upon a Time (Mike Dibb, 1983/5, 52 mins)
12.05 Pig Earth (Mike Dibb, 1979, 50 mins)
Based on John Berger’s experience of peasant existence with photographs by Jean Mohr
13.15 Another Way of Telling with John Berger and Jean Mohr (John Christie, 1988/9, 30 mins each) Two episodes + Q&A
In these first two films from the series John Berger and photographer Jean Mohr present a range of photo-related subjects including: working together on their award-winning books 'A Fortunate Man' and 'A Seventh Man'; the difference between photography and drawing; the ambiguity of the photographic image and John Berger's perceptive analysis of classic pictures by André Kertesz and Chris Killip.
14.45 Taskafa, Stories of the Street (Andrea Luka Zimmerman, 2013, 66 mins) + Q&A
Taskafa is an artist’s essay film about memory and the most necessary forms of belonging, both to a place and to history, through a search for the role played in the city by Istanbul’s street dogs and their relationship to its human populations.
16.15 Parting Shots from Animals (Mike Dibb, 1980, 60 mins)
Developed from essays by John Berger in collaboration with Chris Rawlence, Parting Shots is a film, not so much about us the animals but about you, the people ...
17.15 Letter from Gaza (Perry Ogden, 2008, 17 mins)
John Berger reads assassinated Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani's short story Letter from Gaza, in an address to the inaugural Palestine Festival of Literature (2008).