Over the past year I’ve had the great opportunity of working with the Derek Jarman Film Lab on a number of projects and filming opportunities at the ICA and with Birkbeck College. I have also been involved in the filming of a series of films entitled ‘Four Seasons in Quincy’ about the British writer and thinker, John Berger. The films have been made in collaboration with Tilda Swinton, Christopher Roth and Colin MacCabe. The series is due for release in February 2015.
See more details on the Derek Jarman Lab website: http://www.jarmanlab.org/four-seasons-in-quincy.html
‘In 1973 Berger abandoned the metropolis to live in the tiny Alpine village of Quincy. He realized that subsistence peasant farming, which had sustained humanity for millennia, was drawing to an historical close. He determined to spend the rest of his life bearing witness to this vanishing existence, not least by participating in it. Berger’s trilogy Into their Labours chronicles the peasant life of this Alpine village and its surrounding countryside. Our portrait places Berger in the rhythm of the seasons of Quincy.
The project consists of four short films (between 15 and 40 minutes in duration), one for each season. Each addresses different strands of Berger’s life and work. The winter film, Ways of Listening (directed by Colin MacCabe) deals with fathers and friendship. Animals (directed by Christopher Roth), is shot in spring and considers Berger’s writing on our relationship with animals in juxtaposition with the animals that surround him in the Haute Savoie. In July 2014 Tilda Swinton will direct the summer film, as Berger and his son Yves participate in the village harvest. The autumn film, directed by Colin MacCabe and Bartek Dziadosz, will reflect on politics through a conversation between Berger, Colin MacCabe and the novelist and poet Ben Lerner.’
Bea Moyes 