Defender of the downtrodden, the bullied, the bucolic, Wendell Berry has spent his life writing about the ever-disappearing rural and agrarian communities of America.
In the trailer for the 82 minute documentary, Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry — produced by Robert Redford and Terrence Malik, with Nick Offerman as co-producer — we hear Berry himself reading lines from “The Objective” a poem from the collection A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997.
The Music Hall screens this award-winning documentary (Nashville Film Festival Best Documentary Feature 2016, SXSW Best Documentary Film Feature for cinematography, 2016) Tues. Oct. 2 at 6:30 p.m. Tickets — only $5, are on sale now.
Born in Henry County, KY in August 1934, Berry returned to his small hometown in 1965, where he bought a farmhouse, spending his time farming, teaching, and writing. To date, Berry his written more than 50 works — novels, short stories, poems, and essays.
From the subways and sidewalks of the city to the quiet forest of Henry County, the documentary captures Berry’s words: “To make way for the passage of the crowd of the individuated//the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless with their many eyes//opened toward the objective which they did not yet perceive in the far distance//having never known where they were going//having never known where they came from.”
Look & See is filmed in and around Henry County across four seasons in the farming cycle, with shots of the landscape, interviews with farmers and community members, and scenes of farm life intertwined with Berry’s poetry.
[embed-1]
Love Best of Charleston? Help the Charleston City Paper keep Best of Charleston going every year with a donation. Or sign up to become a member of the Charleston City Paper club.