WAYS OF LISTENING

“I went to find him in Quincy. It was the week before Christmas.” Tilda Swinton and Colin MacCabe propose more than a portrait of their friend and accomplice: everyday situations alternate with conversations on shared concerns.

JOHN BERGER: We who draw do so not only to make something observed visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination.
TILDA SWINTON (OFF): It is this element in drawing that dovetails with the storyteller and thus with the historian. This attention to and quest towards incalculable destinations.
TS: We should go and dig the car out.
JB: What’s happened to it – is the car rescued?
TS (OFF): John’s call to resistance is something of a lifelong contribution. He has an understanding of the powerful radical gesture way beyond gunpowder and bonfires, that I believe our later generations could properly learn from. There’s a passage in this new book about protest, about justice, and about the resistance of the word ‘inconsequential’ which I cherish. I quote: ‘To protest is to refuse being reduced to a zero and to an enforced silence. One protests by building a barricade, taking up arms, going on a hunger strike, linking arms, shouting and writing, in order to save the present moment, whatever the future holds.’ Unquote.

(Excerpt from the film)