The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger

A documentary about novelist, poet, painter, art critic, and political theorist John Berger, The Seasons in Quincy is an impressionistic portrait, serving up a quartet of short films mirroring the changes of season in Quincy, the rural French town where Berger has lived for more than a decade. The first segment, “Ways of Listening,” filmed in the winter of 2010 by Colin MacCabe, centers on a conversation between Berger and a longtime friend, actress Tilda Swinton, with the two reminiscing about childhood memories of their fathers, who were both veterans of wartime service. The second, Christopher Roth's “Spring,” focuses on Berger's interest in the relationship between humans and animals. The black-and-white “A Song for Politics,” co-directed by MacCabe and Bartek Dziadosz, is a short talk-show style discussion with Berger (who identifies himself as a humanist Marxist), MacCabe, and three other artists about the future of capitalism and possible alternatives in the Information Age. The final segment, “Harvest,” directed by Swinton, features a meeting between her teenage children Xavier and Honor and Berger's son Yves, with the latter genially showing the former his father's home and the surrounding fields. The Seasons in Quincy is an engaging and even cinematically inventive tribute to a man whose life as a public intellectual—without a university education, as Berger is quick to point out—has been long and productive. Also featuring a booklet with essays and art by and about Berger, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)