John Berger is a storyteller, essayist, novelist, screenwriter, 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, who has explored the relationships between the individual and society, culture and politics and experience and expression in a series of novels, bookworks, essays, plays, films, photographic collaborations and performances, unmatched in their diversity, ambition and reach.

Here Is Where We Meet  (2005) was the first event of its kind, a six week season in London designed around his work and intended to explore and celebrate cultural collaboration and creative / political commitment. The season took in readings, performances, discussions, new site-specific work and the first ever retrospective of Berger's prolific body of work in film and television. Let Seven Men Write Your Poem is a 96 page, fully illustrated season catalogue, with original articles, poems and essays by all participants, including Michael Ondaatje, Anne Michaels, Geoff Dyer and Berger himself.

CD: Inti-Illimani performs Victor Jara

Victor Jara was one of the giants of Chilean Song in the 1960s and early '70s, a passionate supporter of the Allende government and one of Latin America's most inspirational cultural activists. Brutally murdered by the Pinochet military dictatorship, his life and songs remain enduringly powerful and passionate exemplars of the human spirit at its finest.

His best known songs are performed here by the equally committed and iconic Chilean band Inti-Illimani, who played with Jara and have kept his music alive since his death.

Limited Edition Book: Leaving The Factory: Wang Bing's 'Tie Xi Qu (West of the Tracks)'

On a par, in its ambition, achievement and importance with The Battle of Chile, The Journey and Hour of the Furnaces, Tie Xi Qu (West of the Tracks) (dir. Wang Bing, 2003, 556 mins) represents the boldest and most fearless attempt yet to document and narrate the extraordinary ongoing upheavals in Chinese society. Filmed between 1999 and 2001, it chronicles the slow death of the once thriving Tie Xi industrial district in the country's northeast, and the resulting transformations of the lives and souls of its workers. For the New York Times it is a "profoundly empathetic and humanist work bearing witness to a vanished way of life and the real cost of progress", while Variety asked: "Is there a more sublime debut in recent history?"

Leaving The Factory is a specially-created and beautifully-produced collection of essays on this definitive global film work from an international group of writers, academics and Sinophiles. It is edited by critic and writer Sukhdev Sandhu (many thanks to him).