Revisioning Europe

The Films of John Berger and Alain Tanner

By Jerry White
Categories: Art & Performance Studies, Film Studies
Series: Cinemas Off-Centre
Publisher: ASPP, University of Calgary Press
Paperback : 9781552385500, 254 pages, January 2012
Ebook (PDF) : 9781552385517, 254 pages, May 2012
Ebook (EPUB) : 9781552385531, 254 pages, March 2013
Ebook (Kindle) : 9781552387221, 254 pages, April 2013

Table of contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1: Berger and Tanner before Berger and Tanner 49

2: La Salamandre 89

3: Le Milieu du monde 117

4: Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l’an 2000 149

Conclusion 185

Appendix 1: “Télé-Aphorismes,” by Alain Tanner 209

Appendix 2: “Vers Le Milieu du monde,” by John Berger 225

Bibliography 231

Sources for the films on video 237

Index 239

Description

Revisioning Europe is among the few existing English-language discussions of the films made by British novelist John Berger and Swiss film director Alain Tanner. It brings to light a political cinema that was unsentimental about the possibilities of revolutionary struggle and unsparing in its critique of the European left, and at the same time optimistic about the ability of radicalism - and radical art - to transform the world. Jerry White argues that Berger and Tanner's work is preoccupied with ideas that were both central to the Enlightenment and at the same time characteristically Swiss. Translations of previously unpublished essays by both John Berger and Alain Tanner are included as appendices.