Co-presented by The Working Centre. Featuring special guest, Wesley Bates, acclaimed wood engraver and designer of the film's poster
“Wendell Berry is difficult to classify. “Some people would think he’s a novelist and some think he’s an essayist and some think he’s a poet — and it kind of drifts off into nothing in particular,” his wife, Tanya Berry, says with a laugh toward the end of Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry. Laura Dunn’s documentary is not simply a biography but an attempt to show how Berry sees the world.
“Throughout Look & See, Berry is an almost spectral presence, heard in narration and seen in archival footage. Berry has been compared to Henry David Thoreau. A longtime resident of Port Royal, Ky., he writes about the environment and the lifestyle of farmers with a naturalist’s curiosity and a poet’s gift for description.
“Berry decries the industrialization of agriculture, which he believes will lead us to forget the values that come from living off the land. Berry’s advocacy has made him a hero for the organic-food movement. The film introduces farmers sympathetic to his ideals, even if some have strayed.
“It’s a pleasure to spend 80 minutes in Wendell Berry’s company.” - The New York Times
"For, when all is said and done, Berry’s agrarian vision transcends agriculture; it encompasses the enduring essentials of culture, bridging urban and rural, industry and art, production and consumption, economics and faith, past, present and future. What Henry David Thoreau was to the 19th century, Wendell Berry is to the 20th century — writer, poet, philosopher, teacher, ecologist, elegist, prophet and brave, outspoken defender of our fragile, embattled, endangered planet." - Rob Reid
Read Rob Reid's review of Look & See: Seeing a World in a Grain of Agrarian Sand [1]