This screening is part of John Berger at 100, a film and event series celebrating the centenary of the author, filmmaker and artist. The film Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976), directed by Alain Tanner, was co-written by Berger himself and is widely considered Tanner's masterpiece. The 116-minute Swiss film follows a group of Geneva-based nonconformists and radicals retreating to the countryside to contemplate the aftermath of May 1968 and what cultural and political futures might emerge from those revolutionary upheavals. The film combines political urgency with domestic storytelling, delivering what critics have called an unpretentious yet accomplished portrait of Western social possibility in the face of revolutionary change and economic conservatism.
Following the screening, the event continues in conversation with Anne Michaels, an acclaimed Canadian novelist, poet and Guggenheim Fellow whose work has been translated into more than 50 languages, and Gareth Evans, a London-based writer and film producer who works with the London Review of Books. A bookstall curated by Burley Fisher Books will be available.
