John Berger (Britain, France)
John Berger is a storyteller, essayist, novelist, film-maker, dramatist and critic, whose body of work embodies his concern for, in Geoff Dyer's words, "the enduring mystery of great art and the lived experience of the oppressed." He is one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years, one who has explored the relationships between the individual and society, culture and politics, and experience and expression in a series of novels, essays, plays, films, photographic collaborations and performances, unmatched in their diversity, ambition and reach. His television series and book Ways of Seeing revolutionised the way that Fine Art is read and understood, while his engagements with European peasantry and migration in the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours and A Seventh Man stand as models of empathy and insight.
His latest book, Hold Everything Dear (Verso Books in the UK) is a remarkable collection of essays and reflections on the meaning of commitment and resistance. From striking meditations on the ‘war on terror’ to moving encounters in Palestine and considerations of radical cultural practise, it deepens and extends our understanding of the difficult present moment.
Berger is also a major scriptwriter for film. Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 is a profound and joyful study of the attempts of a group of friends and fellow travellers to live a meaningful life in the aftermath of 1968. Play Me Something is a beautifully wrought drama of European migration and the attendant priorities for being. It will be available for the first time on video or dvd in the summer and will be launched here by Second Run dvd (see below). John Berger lives in France. www.johnberger.org
Don DeLillo (USA)
The novels, plays and essays of Don DeLillo constitute the most relevant, profound and aesthetically invigorating project in American letters since the Second World War. DeLillo has illuminated vast arenas of our collective experience over the last decades, whether it be the struggle for individual identity against the varying pressures of mass conformity, the accompanying performance of self in society, the systemic nature of power and its surveillant means of control, the ambiguous nature of image and language and, most pertinently now, the relationship – personal, social, cultural – to the ‘other’, however defined. In an interview published in the 40th anniversary edition of the ‘Paris Review’, DeLillo talked about an imaginary reader of his published work, “a stranger somewhere who… needs a book that will help him realise he is not alone.”
The author of, among many other books, Libra, Mao II and Underworld, his most recent publication is Falling Man (2007). Please Note: Don DeLillo will not be attending Under the Linden 2008 in person.
website
Eugène Green (France)
A remarkable voice in French and world cinema, American born Green worked first in French Baroque Theatre before turning to film. His three features: Toutes les Nuits, Le Monde Vivant and Le Pont des Arts, alongside four shorter films, reveal a singular vision of life, love, destiny and consciousness, with a Renaissance tone of attention to things beyond the visible. An accomplished poet and performer, he is also an important theoretician of the moving image. His new novel will be published this summer in France. He lives in Paris.
“It’s not fashionable nowadays to talk about the metaphysical and transcendent, but that numinous light is surely one means whereby Green evokes the inner spirit and hidden energy of things and people, which attempts to direct our attention to a concealed reality beyond the world of appearances, and which puts him in exalted company with the likes of Dreyer, Bresson and nowadays Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.”
Kieron Corless, writing in Vertigo magazine
The Martinu Quartet (Czech Republic)
The Martinu Quartet was founded in 1976 at the Prague Conservatory under the name of the Havlák Quartet. In 1985 the ensemble, with the approval of the Bohuslav Martinu Society, took the name of the Martinu Quartet, while pledging to promote Martinu’s chamber music. They have appeared all over Europe and have made regular tours of the USA, Canada, Spain, Japan and England. They have recorded seven of Martinu’s string quartets for the Naxos label. In 2003 they released the works of Bodorová (Terezín Ghetto Requiem) and Stevenson. In 2004 they received the MIDEM in award in Cannes for best CD of the year in the solo/ensemble repertoire of the 20th Century section.
The Martinu Quartet promotes a broad repertoire, with a special emphasis on Czech chamber music. Apart from many recordings for Czech Radio, Radio France, the BBC, ARD and ORF, the Martinu Quartet appears on the recording labels Harmonia Mundi, Panton, Romantic Robot, Arco Diva, Studio Matou and Naxos, among others.
www.martinuquartet.eu
Anne Michaels (Canada)
A multi-award winning poet and novelist, Michaels is the author of three collections of poetry and the fiction Fugitive Pieces, which won the Orange Prize, was a bestseller worldwide and has been adapted, with acclaim, for the cinema. In 2005 she collaborated with John Berger and theatre company Complicite on a unique, site-specific performance, Vanishing Points for the Gymnasium, King’s Cross, London. She has recently completed a second novel, The Winter Vault, to be published in 2009. She lives in Toronto.
Mehelli Modi and Second Run dvd (Britain)
The founder and director of the essential world cinema dvd label Second Run, Mehelli Modi worked extensively in the music industry before launching this highly personal and necessary project. Often rescuing and restoring original prints, and always working closely with directors, writers and designers, he has created a vital and maverick catalogue of overlooked classics of international cinema, often releasing titles for the first time anywhere on dvd. With a passionate interest in Central European cinema, Modi and Second Run are a natural partner to both the cultural and geographic concerns of Under the Linden.
www.secondrundvd.com
Sally Potter (Britain)
Sally Potter’s work has, from the early 1970s, embraced dance, performance, theatre, music and film. Since her first cult hit with Thriller (1979), Potter has concentrated on film and directed her first feature, The Gold Diggers, starring Julie Christie, in 1983. Potter then made a short, The London Story and several documentaries before the internationally acclaimed and multi-award winning Orlando, starring Tilda Swinton, took her work to a global audience. This was followed in 1996 by The Tango Lesson, which again garnered several awards. In 2000 Potter wrote and directed The Man Who Cried, starring Christina Ricci, Johnny Depp, Cate Blanchett and John Turturro. In 2005 Potter completed her most recent film, YES, starring Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian, and Sam Neill. She is currently working on a range of projects in film, opera and the internet, and underway with production of her new feature Rage. Sally Potter has an online diary and interactive message board at www.sallypotter.com
Sukhdev Sandhu (Britain)
One of the most wide-ranging, enquiring and insightful commentators and cross-disciplinary cultural activists currently at work, Sukhdev Sandhu is the Chief Film Critic for The Daily Telegraph and the creator and author of Nighthaunts (Artangel and Verso). His books include London Calling and I’ll Get My Coat. He writes and broadcasts across numerous subjects and publications and is currently developing magazine initiatives in New York and site-specific work for the city of Stockholm.
Jirí Wehle (Czech Republic)
After musical beginnings in the 1960s, inspired by Little Richard, The Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, Wehle co-founded his first band, generally in the folk style, and often with his composer father. In the 1980s, he started the ensemble Cantores Bohemiae, where the ‘pseudo-Renaissance’ sound of his melodies was born. Mostly he composed these songs using the texts of classical Czech and foreign poetry (in Czech translation). Several albums were released, and numerous concerts took place, at home and abroad.
By the mid 1990s Wehle became very influenced by the gothic period and acquired numerous period instruments (schalmei, shawm, Bohemian bagpipes, crumhorn, cittern, hurdy gurdy...). He became a permanent part of the Faber project (a mediaeval village) and a guest performer at many Czech castles. Now working on the streets of Prague as a solo troubadour and multi-instrumentalist, he participates every year in various international festivals of medieval music and street musicians across Europe, as well as composing for the theatre. He has released two cds as a solo artist, and plays regularly with various bands and ensembles. www.jiriwehle.com