![]() ![]() This latter drama, the Barra one, is acted by a motley selection of players, including the cultural earthquake, Hamish Henderson, and the great folklorist and singer and teacher and publisher, Margaret Bennett. As they sit waiting at the tiny airport for a delayed flight to Glasgow, they get drawn into the Stranger’s story-telling, and, in the process discover unexpected affinities. The story that he tells is one of his own, the last in his “Once in Europa” collection, about a chance meeting of two lovers-to-be at a Festa de l’Unita on the Venetian island of Giudecca, one of the couple being a cattle farmer from inland, the other a shopworker from the city.Īs well as being narrated in Berger’s voice-over, this story is partly dramatised in the film, and is embedded in a second film-drama about strangers meeting on the Hebridean island of Barra. In this film, John Berger plays a leading role, that of a story-telling Stranger. One contributor to the event was Timothy Neat (artist, photographer, biographer, poet, historian, teacher, and expert in mushrooms and honey), who screened a film that he had made in 1989, “Play Me Something”. The Edinburgh event served as the best of obituaries, a multi-disciplinary and multi-genre affair, attended by a multiplicity of friends, including some who had never met the man, or corresponded directly with him, but who felt they knew him through the comradeship of his works, as Gunaratnam described. You will also find voices raised in hostility to John Berger’s memory – as in Michael Henderson’s obituary, for example, in “The Spectator” on 4th January – because, being anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist and fiercely combative all his life, in fact being “Permanent Red”, to quote the title of an early collection of his essays, Berger quite properly made enemies as well as friends. “Immersed in his story-telling and stories about him,” she explained, “I saw up-close what he meant by a story-teller’s hospitality, how language and writing can offer a sense of community.” Hope names a commitment to change the world.” And there is Yasmin Gunaratnam’s obituary, written for “Red Pepper”, on 19th January. “It was hope,” he wrote, “that allowed Berger to write so beautifully. She concluded that, “A reader coming anywhere near his work encounters life-force, thought-force – and the force, too, of the love all through it.” Then there is Jacob Brogan’s obituary, written for “The New Yorker” on 9th January. of international reach.Īli Smith’s obituary, written for “The Guardian” on 6th January, provides a good example. You only need to read a few of the obituaries that were published at the time to get a feeling for the fact that here was a friend to many, a giver and receiver of goodwill, as well as an artist, critic, story-teller, essayist, poet, dramatist, film-maker, etc. That member was John Berger, the Marxist critic, writer, and artist, who was not only honorary, but honoured, and also greatly loved. On 23rd February, 2017, in Edinburgh, an event was held by the Royal Scottish Academy, in commemoration of an honorary member who had died a few weeks earlier, on 2nd January, in Paris. David Betteridge re-tells an old tale, inspired by John Berger, Timothy Neat, and Margaret Bennett, with drawings by Bob Starrett
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