WEBVTT

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[background noise]

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The removal of cataracts from the eyes

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is comparable with the removal

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of a particular form of forgetfulness.

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Your eyes begin to remember first times

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and it is in this sense

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that what they experienced
after the intervention

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is a kind of visual renaissance.

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The unstartling heterogeneousness

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of the existence has marvelously returned

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and the two eyes [?] now removed

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again and again register supplies.

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[music]

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[foreign language]

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Tomorrow it will be three weeks
after the operation.

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If I tried to sum up
the transformed experience of looking

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I\'d say it\'s like suddenly finding oneself

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in a scene painted by Vermeer.

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The surface of everything
you\'re looking at

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is covered with a dew of light.

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[background noise]

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[foreign language]

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I\'m in this storytelling imagination.

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[foreign language]

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[laughs]

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I had a dream
in which I was a strange dealer,

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a dealer in looks, or appearances.

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I collected and distributed them,
and in the dream,

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I had just discovered a secret,
I discovered it on my own, no help.

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The Secret was to get inside

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whatever I was looking at, get inside it.

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When I woke up from that dream,
I couldn\'t remember how it was done

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and I now no longer know
how to get inside things.

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I started writing art criticism,
how old was I?

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I was 25, 26

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and a great deal of my life
up to that moment had been involved

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with drawing with painting Kokoschka
as both a man and a painter

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has fascinated me for a long time.

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Somehow when you consider Picasso,
it is the spirit of the man

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rather than any single work,
which dominates and it\'s so striking.

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The act of looking for [?]
is a form of prayer,

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a way of grasping

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or glimpsing the absolute.

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Painting, drawing was something
that I thought I knew something about,

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and therefore the only experience
I had really was about looking.

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Looking and doing something on paper
or in three dimensions with what one saw.

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The interrogation of appearances.

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[foreign language]

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[foreign language]

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There was about 16, 17 maybe 18,
I don\'t know and you were in your...

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Yes, and that is-

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That\'s [foreign language]

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- I think it\'s a [foreign language]
- No, I think so too.

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- We look good, don\'t we?
- Very good, very good.

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Since she was a small kid, we used to look
at pictures reproductions together

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in books on postcards
and then we would chat about them.

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Exactly.

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Here this is about a little collection
of pictures

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that could come from our lives,
it\'s gone, Jackie.

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Exactly, good, you start.

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Do you feel
like that sometimes in the morning?

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[laughs]

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Not really, but I would love
to be able to plunge my hand

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in such luxurious hair,

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I wish I could, but no, I don\'t.

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Do you think that this could be the head

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that fits behind this?

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[laughs]

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Well, they\'re both paintings by Kobe,

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and the funny thing
is that looking at this one,

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which is called the origin of the world,

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you don\'t think about the woman\'s face,

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you don\'t think about the rest of her
at the same time,

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it\'s not sexually provocative.

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You\'re just in face of astounding

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always surprising reality.

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In that sense is it like a natural morte?

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Like a natural morte?

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No.

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That\'s the opposite of that your morte.

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We could call it the natural [?]

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[laughs]

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This is the first of four programs
in which I want to question

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some of the assumptions usually made
about the tradition of European painting.

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Filming this was a moment
of great tension for me

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because if John was going to screw it up
there was no way we could repeat it.

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This is where a lot of my old films

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and all this stuff is including,

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I think, the original film cans containing

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the cutting copy of Ways of Seeing.

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[foreign language]

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There it is,
Ways of Seeing programs 1 and 2

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on the old film.

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[foreign language]

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I think the first idea he had was to use
an archetype called European painting

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as a point of departure and deconstruct
the concept of national heritage.

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What did national heritage mean
when we talked about national heritage,

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when we really were talking
about the private wealth

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of enormous landowners.

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The process of seeing paintings
or seeing anything else

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is less spontaneous and natural
than we tend to believe.

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A large part of seeing
depends upon habit and convention.

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All the paintings of the tradition
used the convention of perspective

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which is unique to European art.

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I remember saying,
\"John, shouldn\'t we just say maybe,

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or perhaps, or something?\"
He said, \"No no.

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No, no.
You just got to say it.

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If you say it and somebody disagrees
then they\'re engaged.\"

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My perspective centers everything
on the eye of the beholder

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it is like a a beam from a lighthouse,
only instead of light traveling outwards,

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appearances travel in
and our tradition of art

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called those appearances reality.

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We tried a lot of experiments
and funnily enough most of them

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didn\'t work terribly well.

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One worked amazingly
when we had the Caravaggio.

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I think it\'s a man.

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I think it\'s a woman.

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There\'s no bristles.

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He hasn\'t got any bristles.

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He got a moustache even.

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He hasn\'t got any bristles.

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Not quite all, but most of the boys
thought that he was a man

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and most of the girls who thought
because she was not a man.

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You said she was [?].

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Because they were really looking
and really relating what they saw

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to their own experience.

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They recognized something
that most adults wouldn\'t.

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Without knowing the artist\'s name
let alone anything about Caravaggio’s life

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or the fact that he was a homosexual,
they immediately saw

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how sexually ambivalent
the principal figure was.

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Caravaggio,
I think he\'s my favorite painter.

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The paintings by other painters
which perhaps I prefer.

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As a figure, as a life,

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his life is my favorite life of a painter.

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Why?

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Because he was consistently a rebel.

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You cannot predict
the impact a series has.

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I don\'t think it occurred to John
and myself the effect the series

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was going to have
because it didn\'t certainly occur

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to the BBC that it might have any impact.

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To actually suggest
at the end of a television film

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be critical of what we\'re telling you.

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That was also just something
which was just so different.

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Remember that I am controlling
and using for my own purposes

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the means of reproduction needed
for these programs.

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The images may be like words
but there is no dialogue yet.

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You cannot reply to me.

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I hope you will consider what I arrange,
but be skeptical of it.

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From a very very early age,
really when I was a small kid

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in my first school,

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I was

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skeptical about the world

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and what was happening around me

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and so I became

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a conspirator against it.

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Then now I think
as soon as I’m really in contact

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with somebody,
whether I know them very well

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and love them or whether it\'s a stranger,
if there is a common feeling,

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I treat them as a fellow conspirator.

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As a an accomplice complicity.

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An accomplice and with a wink.

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I propose a conspiracy of orphans.

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We exchange winks, we reject hierarchies.

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All the hierarchies.

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We take the shit of the world for granted

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and we exchange stories about ways

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in which we nevertheless get by.

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We are impertinent.

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Yes, we are impertinent.

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I guess that I approach

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and chat up viewers and readers

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in the same way
as if you too were orphans.

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Get what I mean?

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I knocked the ball to him and I said,
\"How can we start?

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How should we start?\"
Then he said to me,

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the bang with the ball came back
and he said,

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\"Why don\'t you just send me a color?\"
I said, \"Okay, great.\"

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Then of course I put the phone down
and thought, \"What\'s he talking about?

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How am I going to do that?\"
Send him a color?

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Would I send him some powder,
I don\'t know, some colored powder.

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What would I do?

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[foreign language]

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I sent you this cadmium red.

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Here we have the very first letter I sent.

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Yesterday I went to a funeral someone
I didn\'t really know very well

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and during the service
before the cremation

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I was looking at the flowers.

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When I got home I was still thinking
about these flowers and I thought

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I posed myself a problem to try
and find the red color

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which I liked very much.

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I tried to identify
and I went to my watercolor box.

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For no better reason
than the memory of those flowers,

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I sent you this cadmium red.

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Then very soon
I got a letter back from him,

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\"Red is not usually an innocent color

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but the red you sent me is.

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It\'s the red of childhood,

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a pretend red or if you like,

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the red of young eyelids shut tight.\"

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It\'s like the color when you\'re a kid
when you shut your eyes

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and look up at the sky
and it\'s that color that red color

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with the blood in your eyelids.

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I thought, \"Gosh, that\'s amazing.\"

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Then, of course,
we went on from that where making

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and making these different letters
and replies.

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We didn\'t start off
with a proper list of colors,

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these the ones we\'re going to do.

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They\'re very much colors
that presented themselves to us.

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It was John\'s question to do
with Genevieve being pregnant,

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what color would you see inside her?

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The color I worked out or thought about

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was mother of Pearl and so look,

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there\'s the photo.

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Genevieve\'s... where is she on that?

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Genevieve there.

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This one little figure in the blue dress...
And John described this.

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The bay,
all the things leading to this figure.

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The world is spread out for her.

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The waters break.

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The bay opens.

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The sand is skin colored.

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The houses, wait, watching.

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I\'d name, that bay Hutua\'s bay.

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So conscious, does it make us aware

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of everything that is within, inside.

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Moving inside
that tiny figure of Genevieve.

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They were all things that came from
really just thinking about the show.

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I hadn\'t even looked at for...
Because I was writing about it to John,

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trying to make something interesting
and then I discovered things

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I hadn\'t seen at all.

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Now, don\'t you think it\'s John\'s son?

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Make me.

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- Johnny?
- No it\'s you.

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- It\'s not.
- It\'s you.

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No, no, no.
It\'s not me. No, no.

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- No?
- No, no, really, really.

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You are complete wrong. Look again.
It\'s really not me. Serious.

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[foreign language]

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Of all the things we\'ve done together,
books anyway,

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I think I\'m proudest of The Seventh Man.

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On one hand, it\'s a book
that we were incredibly precise about.

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Laying out every page,
considering every space,

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every juxtaposition of image,
seeing exactly where a poem should occur...

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And so we actually made something
with this maximum concentration,

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which in a certain sense
can be called aesthetic.

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At the same time,
the book when once it\'s out actually goes

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and to its target.

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That is to say,
not really principally to sociologists

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but to migrant workers themselves.

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[foreign language]

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What I appreciate in him
is, that he goes up and down.

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I would be tempted to say
like a woman sometimes, but it\'s wrong

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because it doesn\'t belong only to women
to be so expressive, so warm,

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but he\'s just outspoken.

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[foreign language]

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There are pictures of John as a young man

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like that one, where he\'s very strong

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and certain of himself and very positive,

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but it\'s more or less the public face

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he wants to give away.

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While in the last 10 years
I begin to catch on his face,

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all kinds of other feelings.

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Certain anxiety, also doubts
about some of his beliefs.

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Here is somebody else traveling and I know
that this painting counted a lot for you

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in your whole life.

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- Yes.
- Are we approaching motorbikes here?

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Yes.

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Here we are approaching motorbikes.

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Oh, incredibly and of course
it\'s by Rembrandt

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and it is called Polish Rider.

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Who he was and where he was...
And I don\'t think Rembrandt

00:26:14.436 --> 00:26:20.472
called it Polish Rider,
but if I was a manufacturer of motorbikes,

00:26:21.047 --> 00:26:24.567
- I would call one The Polish Rider.
- Yes.

00:26:24.750 --> 00:26:28.916
Use that for publicity. [laughter]

00:26:33.076 --> 00:26:35.861
[background noise]

00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:20.363
[motorbike vrooming]

00:27:25.469 --> 00:27:31.454
If you\'re going to survive riding a bike,
you have to be totally concentrated

00:27:32.043 --> 00:27:34.167
on the here and now.

00:27:34.429 --> 00:27:38.472
About everything observed
of the here and now.

00:27:38.821 --> 00:27:40.887
You don\'t think about the past.
You don\'t think about the future.

00:27:41.076 --> 00:27:43.738
You don\'t have memories,
you don\'t have expectations

00:27:44.029 --> 00:27:47.716
except the immediate ones
which have to be negotiated.

00:27:48.385 --> 00:27:51.403
This concentration on the here and now

00:27:52.400 --> 00:27:58.349
is curiously calming, because well,

00:27:58.538 --> 00:28:00.392
there you are alive,

00:28:00.785 --> 00:28:07.258
you\'re moving
and you notice what you\'re moving through

00:28:07.440 --> 00:28:09.229
and that\'s all that exists.

00:28:17.098 --> 00:28:24.036
[foreign language]

00:28:40.945 --> 00:28:45.323
[motorbike vrooming]

00:28:45.563 --> 00:28:51.229
[background noise]

00:28:57.861 --> 00:29:01.941
When my father moved out of London,
out of England... a few things I know

00:29:02.130 --> 00:29:06.618
is just from what I heard of him
but at first that he never felt at home

00:29:06.814 --> 00:29:12.123
in England and also politically
it\'s a story of England

00:29:12.312 --> 00:29:18.385
and two years of torture
and all the conservatism going on there.

00:29:19.934 --> 00:29:20.989
He couldn\'t.

00:29:21.178 --> 00:29:25.956
He simply... as a wall, rather a grey,
sad wall,

00:29:26.632 --> 00:29:32.378
and I think at that time for him France,
in general, with it\'s his history

00:29:32.625 --> 00:29:37.316
and its politics, at least at that time,
was quite the opposite.

00:29:37.716 --> 00:29:43.345
[birds chirping]

00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:57.832
[background noise]

00:30:07.490 --> 00:30:09.185
I think he says that he never felt

00:30:09.389 --> 00:30:15.978
really at home anywhere
but probably here more than anywhere else

00:30:16.792 --> 00:30:20.516
because of his relations
with the people here

00:30:20.720 --> 00:30:24.269
which was mostly based upon their work.

00:30:25.141 --> 00:30:30.516
[background noise]

00:30:43.941 --> 00:30:49.061
[foreign language]

00:31:12.538 --> 00:31:18.283
When he had this project of writing
this strategy about the peasant community

00:31:18.640 --> 00:31:22.065
and this disappearing way of living,

00:31:23.338 --> 00:31:26.000
he started to basically to offer help

00:31:26.196 --> 00:31:31.454
to those people and learn from them.

00:31:31.643 --> 00:31:34.967
Throughout this help he was trying

00:31:35.185 --> 00:31:39.200
to provide in his unexperimented way

00:31:39.869 --> 00:31:44.101
because those people
are so rooted with land, the place,

00:31:44.378 --> 00:31:49.752
the time, the season,
everything I think that\'s maybe made him

00:31:54.305 --> 00:31:57.600
or it allowed him to have some roots here.

00:32:08.916 --> 00:32:14.836
[background noise]

00:32:23.869 --> 00:32:28.138
I was looking at that time for a piece
that I was going to make

00:32:29.025 --> 00:32:32.618
and a friend of mine said
\"Oh, but you remember

00:32:32.814 --> 00:32:37.440
what John wrote in Pigeth, do you remember
the three lives of Lucy Cabral?\"

00:32:38.669 --> 00:32:42.145
I wrote to John and said,
\"Would you consider letting me

00:32:42.778 --> 00:32:46.734
make this for the stage?\"
John being John said,

00:32:46.923 --> 00:32:50.749
\"Well, of course, well, the only payment
I would require

00:32:51.381 --> 00:32:54.880
is if I could come and watch you work
at some point.\"

00:32:55.629 --> 00:32:58.945
Then I went up to visit him
for the first time in the mountains

00:32:59.134 --> 00:33:01.723
with my designer

00:33:04.647 --> 00:33:09.054
and we walked with John
through the mountains and he showed us

00:33:09.243 --> 00:33:12.952
the very places
which had been inspirational to him

00:33:13.141 --> 00:33:15.447
in making, Lucy Cabral.

00:33:16.109 --> 00:33:20.232
That really started what became
a very deep friendship

00:33:22.094 --> 00:33:27.069
and so as a consequence
we\'ve created many pieces together.

00:33:27.425 --> 00:33:31.381
The story of Lucy Cabral,
there was really a woman

00:33:31.912 --> 00:33:37.403
and most of the characters in the story
are people I came to know quite closely

00:33:38.429 --> 00:33:41.527
and now to see those lives

00:33:41.840 --> 00:33:46.138
transported here and actually speaking

00:33:46.472 --> 00:33:52.930
to thousands of people who are so far away
from the life of peasants

00:33:53.120 --> 00:33:59.970
in mountain villages is still something
which is very mysterious to me.

00:34:02.269 --> 00:34:08.050
[foreign language]

00:34:13.127 --> 00:34:18.981
Lucy Cabral who was known
as the Cock Cakry is dead.

00:34:24.996 --> 00:34:29.825
In the writing of into their labors,
he holds the generations

00:34:30.749 --> 00:34:35.098
of all these people who are nameless
and who had no voice

00:34:35.316 --> 00:34:38.305
who don\'t exist really
for they\'ve disappeared.

00:34:38.952 --> 00:34:40.443
He brings them to life.

00:34:43.621 --> 00:34:45.243
It\'s a girl.

00:34:46.436 --> 00:34:48.640
Generations of labor,

00:34:49.076 --> 00:34:53.396
a particularly precarious form

00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:59.469
of very, very brutal agriculture.

00:35:08.545 --> 00:35:12.269
I might say well, what if we do this
and we change it and develop it

00:35:12.574 --> 00:35:14.807
or I might add something
or I\'d found something

00:35:14.996 --> 00:35:17.927
or we missed something
and I would invent something else.

00:35:18.472 --> 00:35:22.647
Whatever I suggested
he would not only consider it

00:35:23.432 --> 00:35:26.567
or be open to it.
He would be immediately interested.

00:35:27.876 --> 00:35:32.792
My father, mother, brothers, sisters,

00:35:33.309 --> 00:35:36.458
cows, horses, rabbits, chickens, goats,

00:35:36.749 --> 00:35:38.370
all have gone

00:35:42.436 --> 00:35:44.029
and Lucy Cabral.

00:35:46.116 --> 00:35:49.003
- Is dead.
- Is dead.

00:35:50.021 --> 00:35:51.418
I say that.

00:35:51.781 --> 00:35:54.727
I do not altogether believe it.

00:35:55.258 --> 00:35:57.207
I don\'t altogether believe it.

00:35:57.410 --> 00:35:59.585
Sometimes it seems to me-

00:35:59.774 --> 00:36:04.458
That I am nearing the edge of the forest,
I will never again be 16

00:36:05.694 --> 00:36:09.432
and if I am to leave the forest
it will be on the far side.

00:36:09.825 --> 00:36:11.767
It will be on the far side.

00:36:12.014 --> 00:36:14.770
Do I feel this because I\'m old and tired?

00:36:15.745 --> 00:36:17.032
I doubt it-

00:36:17.323 --> 00:36:21.178
but there are moments
when I see something different

00:36:22.370 --> 00:36:25.658
Moments when a blue sky

00:36:28.130 --> 00:36:30.967
reminds me of Lucy Cabral.

00:36:39.512 --> 00:36:43.512
For myself, he was my father
and not John Berger the writer.

00:36:44.276 --> 00:36:50.894
I didn\'t really notice almost
what my father was doing

00:36:51.170 --> 00:36:54.341
or I didn\'t pay any attention anyway.

00:36:55.585 --> 00:37:01.032
I didn\'t read what he wrote
until very, very late.

00:37:03.112 --> 00:37:08.967
I think the people here
and the peasants the fact that my father

00:37:09.156 --> 00:37:15.163
was a writer
and even if he was writing about them

00:37:16.007 --> 00:37:17.425
they knew that.

00:37:20.763 --> 00:37:25.760
To consider that as a real work
that\'s a bit too much for them.

00:37:33.723 --> 00:37:39.556
A week ago I cleared out
and buried the years shit,

00:37:41.069 --> 00:37:45.381
the shit of my family and of our friends
who visit us,

00:37:46.807 --> 00:37:48.785
has to be done once a year,

00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:54.501
cow and horse dung,
they\'re relatively agreeable.

00:37:55.512 --> 00:37:58.050
You could even become nostalgic
about them,

00:37:59.905 --> 00:38:03.054
they smell of fermented grain

00:38:04.225 --> 00:38:09.883
and somewhere on the far side
of their smell there\'s hay and glass.

00:38:12.618 --> 00:38:16.792
Chicken shit disagreeable
and lasts of throat

00:38:17.709 --> 00:38:20.130
because the quality of ammonia in it.

00:38:23.418 --> 00:38:26.560
Pig and human excrete, however,

00:38:26.945 --> 00:38:30.647
smell the worst because men and pigs

00:38:32.050 --> 00:38:36.996
are carnivorous
and their appetites are indiscriminant.

00:38:40.007 --> 00:38:44.552
Whilst shoveling,
images of paradise coming into my mind

00:38:48.269 --> 00:38:52.763
but from where I dug
the whole a lilac tree

00:38:52.974 --> 00:38:54.778
is coming into flower.

00:38:55.934 --> 00:38:58.669
I can smell the lilac through the sheet,

00:39:00.494 --> 00:39:03.978
It smells a mint mixed

00:39:04.174 --> 00:39:10.305
with a lot of honey
and this perfume takes me back

00:39:10.880 --> 00:39:13.287
to my very early childhood,

00:39:15.243 --> 00:39:18.210
to the first garden I ever knew

00:39:19.025 --> 00:39:23.229
from long before either lilac

00:39:23.970 --> 00:39:26.450
or shit a name.

00:39:45.716 --> 00:39:47.949
My mother, Beverly, was...

00:39:48.872 --> 00:39:55.650
Played a great role in my father\'s work

00:39:56.770 --> 00:40:00.152
simply because she did everything else
from writing.

00:40:00.690 --> 00:40:07.476
She took care of everything
which was needed to be done for my father

00:40:07.665 --> 00:40:11.905
to be able just to concentrate on writing.

00:40:16.909 --> 00:40:23.505
That goes from typing what he wrote
because he writes by hand,

00:40:24.007 --> 00:40:29.643
sending it out, doing all the relation
with the publishers, newspapers,

00:40:30.916 --> 00:40:37.636
creating the archive gradually,
doing his accounting, his taxes.

00:40:43.003 --> 00:40:48.610
She did that out of...
Not only out of love for him, of course,

00:40:50.189 --> 00:40:53.898
but I think because both shared
the same belief.

00:40:54.843 --> 00:40:59.141
The belief that doing that was worth it,

00:40:59.410 --> 00:41:01.403
that it brought something

00:41:01.621 --> 00:41:04.087
which was needed into the world.

00:41:06.618 --> 00:41:10.763
She was the first one
with whom he shared what he wrote,

00:41:11.141 --> 00:41:15.963
and always, when he was writing,
he was awaiting her response.

00:41:18.254 --> 00:41:20.683
They had this very strong complicity.

00:41:22.087 --> 00:41:25.054
My father wrote his dedication to her;

00:41:25.330 --> 00:41:29.192
\"To Beverley, mistress of each page.\"

00:41:30.538 --> 00:41:33.912
He showed it to her
when she was in the bed,

00:41:34.567 --> 00:41:40.261
the bed where she died,
just next door, and that made her

00:41:40.450 --> 00:41:42.865
very happy to see the dedication.

00:41:44.901 --> 00:41:49.621
Since Beverley is gone my father now
mostly lives in Paris

00:41:50.429 --> 00:41:52.770
but we\'re in very close contact.

00:41:53.738 --> 00:41:55.141
There\'s many ways

00:41:55.490 --> 00:41:59.010
by which we share what we\'re doing.

00:41:59.978 --> 00:42:04.501
[foreign language]

00:42:18.116 --> 00:42:20.050
There, this is a present for you.

00:42:22.181 --> 00:42:23.563
I\'ll show you.

00:42:26.334 --> 00:42:27.556
Oh.

00:42:28.820 --> 00:42:31.570
[foreign language]

00:42:31.847 --> 00:42:32.974
Wow.

00:42:33.163 --> 00:42:37.134
[foreign language]

00:42:37.854 --> 00:42:40.603
Gosh, this is beautiful.

00:42:43.621 --> 00:42:48.814
[foreign language]

00:42:53.640 --> 00:42:58.945
- I think he\'s going upstream the river.
- Yes. [laughs]. Exactly. Exactly.

00:42:59.483 --> 00:43:03.185
[foreign language]

00:43:57.883 --> 00:43:59.061
Okay.

00:44:03.190 --> 00:44:06.545
It was hot, perhaps 28 degrees centigrade.

00:44:07.236 --> 00:44:10.123
It was the end of the month of May.

00:44:12.029 --> 00:44:15.461
An old woman with an umbrella
was sitting very still

00:44:15.978 --> 00:44:17.956
on one of the park benches.

00:44:20.065 --> 00:44:24.247
She had the kind of stillness
that draws attention to itself.

00:44:26.138 --> 00:44:28.007
To whom was it addressed?

00:44:28.414 --> 00:44:34.225
Abruptly, abruptly, as I was asking myself
this question, she got to her feet,

00:44:34.523 --> 00:44:39.578
turned, and using her umbrella
like a walking stick came towards me.

00:44:40.698 --> 00:44:45.207
I recognized her walk long
before I could see her face.

00:44:46.116 --> 00:44:48.996
The walk of somebody
already looking forward

00:44:49.185 --> 00:44:51.425
to a living and sitting down.

00:44:53.090 --> 00:44:54.392
It was my mother.

00:44:57.301 --> 00:45:01.963
\"All my books have been about you,\"
I suddenly say.

00:45:03.250 --> 00:45:08.130
\"Books are also about language,
and language for me is inseparable

00:45:08.320 --> 00:45:09.941
from your voice, mother\".

00:45:10.363 --> 00:45:11.483
\"Nonsense.

00:45:11.890 --> 00:45:16.240
Maybe you wrote them so I should be there,
keeping you company, and I was.

00:45:17.410 --> 00:45:19.970
Yet they were about everything
in the world but me.

00:45:20.676 --> 00:45:24.821
I\'ve had to wait until now,
until you\'re an old man in Lisboa,

00:45:25.629 --> 00:45:29.832
for you to be writing
this very short story about me.\"

00:45:30.618 --> 00:45:36.516
[foreign language]

00:46:31.410 --> 00:46:34.763
Commonly of death you said that the living

00:46:35.898 --> 00:46:39.185
are at the core of the dead.

00:46:39.490 --> 00:46:45.389
They surround us and they depend on us,
like the passage that you read

00:46:45.745 --> 00:46:48.901
where you meet your mother in Lisbon.

00:46:51.672 --> 00:46:55.476
No, I follow what you mean,
and maybe I suggest that,

00:46:55.660 --> 00:46:59.694
but it\'s not really quite what I mean.
It\'s rather more the other way round.

00:47:03.098 --> 00:47:07.563
It is that we need the dead

00:47:17.294 --> 00:47:19.345
to recognize ourselves.

00:47:19.927 --> 00:47:23.672
In any way, the dead are essential to us.

00:47:29.025 --> 00:47:35.192
That recognition begins
with their company in mortality.

00:47:37.636 --> 00:47:39.694
Not immortality, mortality.

00:47:41.530 --> 00:47:44.945
Paul, it\'s a very curious painting.

00:47:45.150 --> 00:47:47.789
- Isn\'t it.
- Very, very curious.

00:47:49.563 --> 00:47:51.898
Do you have anything to tell me
about this man?

00:47:53.410 --> 00:47:56.261
I think the window is his life

00:47:58.705 --> 00:48:01.745
and he\'s trapped in it,

00:48:03.083 --> 00:48:06.610
maybe wandering what\'s outside.

00:48:10.007 --> 00:48:11.905
When he shuts his eyes,

00:48:14.007 --> 00:48:18.152
the window will vanish.

00:48:38.320 --> 00:48:41.149
What does he tell you about himself?

00:48:41.505 --> 00:48:43.461
- What does he tell me?
- Yes.

00:48:43.956 --> 00:48:47.229
For some reason he tells me that,
and I\'ll tell you why.

00:48:48.145 --> 00:48:52.261
Because he actually looks like you
and always made me think of you.

00:48:54.523 --> 00:48:56.029
There\'s something there too.

00:48:56.298 --> 00:48:58.698
Well, I mean, that\'s too flattering.

00:48:59.820 --> 00:49:02.356
- His scepticism-
- Yes.

00:49:03.163 --> 00:49:05.294
Which is never cynical,

00:49:06.829 --> 00:49:10.829
is very close to me.

00:49:12.065 --> 00:49:15.294
You know, this is not to claim
anything for myself,

00:49:15.927 --> 00:49:21.069
but that is really the image
of the storyteller.

00:49:21.607 --> 00:49:24.225
- Yes.
- Not the novelist.

00:49:26.109 --> 00:49:29.054
Not the fashionable literary creator,

00:49:30.269 --> 00:49:33.338
but the guy, often nomadic,

00:49:34.320 --> 00:49:40.909
who goes from place to place
and tells stories that he has lived,

00:49:41.469 --> 00:49:43.112
or that he is making up.

00:49:43.527 --> 00:49:45.876
That idea of a traveller,

00:49:47.978 --> 00:49:53.861
that idea of somebody

00:49:54.050 --> 00:49:57.789
who is completely free from institutions,

00:49:59.687 --> 00:50:02.909
is something also which is contained

00:50:03.098 --> 00:50:05.003
for me in this storyteller.

00:50:06.880 --> 00:50:11.069
With modesty, I tried to be myself.

00:50:18.669 --> 00:50:22.400
I do mostly painting and my father
mainly draws

00:50:22.661 --> 00:50:28.843
but the reason for that for him
is that it did paint

00:50:29.236 --> 00:50:32.938
when he was much younger
and he went to art school

00:50:33.665 --> 00:50:37.694
and then he wanted to become a painter
and he started to work as a painter.

00:50:38.989 --> 00:50:45.134
From what he says, at some point he felt
the urge to write more important,

00:50:45.323 --> 00:50:51.367
more politically,
historically important at that point.

00:51:02.094 --> 00:51:03.752
He kept on drawing.

00:51:04.821 --> 00:51:06.385
It\'s a way of listening.

00:51:06.698 --> 00:51:11.992
It\'s a way of understanding,
discovering the visible.

00:51:15.869 --> 00:51:22.480
I think that\'s why in the last years,
my father has done a lot of drawings

00:51:22.727 --> 00:51:27.650
of very simple things
like such as flowers

00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:32.698
or mainly subjects coming from nature.

00:51:34.538 --> 00:51:38.407
Deary Steve,
in answer to your last letter,

00:51:39.301 --> 00:51:42.167
I send two postcards.

00:51:43.883 --> 00:51:47.330
One is a photo of a Terracotta

00:51:47.796 --> 00:51:52.480
by Della Rubbia and the second

00:51:53.287 --> 00:51:58.545
is a sketch by me,
what I call a text of a white rose

00:51:58.996 --> 00:52:00.370
from the garden.

00:52:02.821 --> 00:52:06.981
I noticed that he had certain curious echo

00:52:08.210 --> 00:52:10.036
with the photo of the Madonna,

00:52:12.116 --> 00:52:14.763
something a little similar
in mood and rhythm.

00:52:14.952 --> 00:52:19.949
No, you see neighbors on the same table.

00:52:20.880 --> 00:52:26.858
That\'s all and the rose
doesn\'t offer constellation

00:52:27.803 --> 00:52:33.643
but resists by itself,
the cruelty of life.

00:52:36.014 --> 00:52:41.854
[music]

00:53:08.843 --> 00:53:14.414
During the last week,
I\'ve been drawing mostly flowers.

00:53:19.570 --> 00:53:21.694
I\'ve been asking myself,

00:53:22.334 --> 00:53:26.523
with a natural forms, a tree, a cloud,

00:53:27.745 --> 00:53:31.578
and with her a stone,
a fly can be looked at

00:53:31.963 --> 00:53:35.207
and perceived as messages.

00:53:36.196 --> 00:53:40.385
Messages, it goes without saying,
which can never be verbalized

00:53:40.952 --> 00:53:44.509
and are not particularly addressed to us.

00:53:47.476 --> 00:53:54.058
Is it possible to read
natural appearances as texts?

00:54:01.978 --> 00:54:05.592
Well, that would be a bit of fun
amongst all the potential.

00:54:05.883 --> 00:54:08.705
[laughter]

00:54:08.894 --> 00:54:11.229
- Why don\'t you have some wine.
- Yes, we have.

00:54:11.410 --> 00:54:12.938
Or some whiskey.

00:54:14.152 --> 00:54:18.269
[crosstalk]

00:54:18.465 --> 00:54:19.650
Wonderful.

00:54:19.840 --> 00:54:26.116
It\'s incredible. [laughter]