John Berger or The Art of Looking (2016)

Art, politics and motorcycles - on the occasion of his 90th birthday
John Berger or the Art of Looking is an intimate portrait of the writer
and art critic whose ground-breaking work on seeing has shaped our
understanding of the concept for over five decades. The film explores
how paintings become narratives and stories turn into images, and rarely
does anybody demonstrate this as poignantly as Berger.

Berger
lived and worked for decades in a small mountain village in the French
Alps, where the nearness to nature, the world of the peasants and his
motorcycle, which for him deals so much with presence, inspired his
drawing and writing.

The film introduces Berger's art of looking
with theatre wizard Simon McBurney, film-director Michael Dibb, visual
artist John Christie, cartoonist Selçuk Demiral, photographer Jean Mohr
as well as two of his children, film-critic Katya Berger and the painter
Yves Berger.

The prelude and starting point is Berger's
mind-boggling experience of restored vision following a successful
cataract removal surgery. There, in the cusp of his clouding eyesight,
Berger re-discovers the irredeemable wonder of seeing.

Realised
as a portrait in works and collaborations, this creative documentary
takes a different approach to biography, with John Berger leading in his
favourite role of the storyteller.

Director: Cherie Dvorák