The Seasons in Quincy

In Quincy, John Berger 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 in Quincy.

The four essay films which comprise The Seasons in Quincy each take different aspects of Berger’s life in the Haute-Savoie, and combine ideas and motifs from Berger’s own work with the atmosphere of his mountain home. Each film was created as an individual work of art but they combine to make a feature film. The Seasons in Quincy shows how film can move beyond text, and beyond fine art, to offer a multifaceted and multilayered portrait. These are more than documentary films – they are exercises in thinking in film.

This project is very close to Tilda Swinton. She will introduce the film herself in Eye.

The Seasons in Quincy was produced by the Derek Jarman Lab, an audio-visual hub for graduate filmmaking based at Birkbeck, University of London, in collaboration with the composer Simon Fisher Turner.