John Burgan

rdf:langString John Burgan

rdf:langString John Burgan FRSA (born in 1962 in London) is an independent documentary director and writer. Many of his films are themed around identity, sense of belonging, and migration. Burgan is best known for his 1998 documentary essay Memory of Berlin. Sometimes autobiographical, sometimes observational, he takes the viewer on a search for identity, sharing his own roots as English adoptee as well as reflecting on the torn identity of the city he chose to live in: Berlin. The film was shown in many film festivals around the world and received the first prize at the Marseille festival "Vue sur les Docs". The film was repeatedly broadcast by ZDF and Arte. Selected commentary to "Memory of Berlin" was published in Grand Street. In Friendly Enemy Alien Burgan asks: "Friends, enemies, aliens: is it possible to be all three at once? June 1940: Jewish refugees from Austria, Germany and Italy flee Hitler at the outbreak of the war and are given asylum in England, to be interned as suspected spies, shipped off on the HMT Dunera to Australia to endure months behind barbed wire deep in the outback." Friendly Enemy Alien was first broadcast by ZDF in Germany in August 2006. The Daily Telegraph quotes John Burgan on his motives for making this film: "Refugees are invariably unwanted and unloved when they arrive, but being at the bottom of the heap they knuckle down and make the best of the chance they've been given, to become an asset to their adopted country." Chris Marker said about John Burgan's work: "I guess it's about time for the First-Person film to become a genre by itself, and for historians to wonder why, as it had been at the roots of literature, it took so much time to the cinema to catch up. I don't take any risk at predicting Memory of Berlin will be considered as a milestone in the road of the film-essay." The film was included in the Planète Marker retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, December 2013.