Event
Ben Rivers: Shorts Program 1
Out Here In The Wilds: The Films of Ben Rivers
Oct 27
Saturday, Oct 27 at 05:00PM
British filmmaker Ben Rivers has made 20 shorts over the past decade: free of narrative, drama and character development, inspired by literature and fine art, and exploring worlds at the far fringe of civilization places of ragged, strange beauty where inventors, seers and eccentric philosophers live in zealous communion with nature. Tonight's program features Old Dark House, where rooms in an abandoned, burnt-out house are revealed by multiple in-camera superimpositions of a single torch-light. This film marked the start start of Rivers' hand-processing his films, which he continues to do.
Also screening is This is My Land, a portrait of Jake Williams, who lives alone within miles of forest in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Jake always has many jobs on at any one time, finds a use for everything, is an expert mandolin player, and has compost heaps going back many years. See below for the full shorts program description.
Old Dark House
(2003, 4 min, 16mm)
Rooms in an abandoned, burnt out house revealed by multiple in-camera superimpositions of a single torch-light.
This Is My Land
(2006, 14 min, 16mm)
A portrait of Jake Williams who lives alone within miles of forest in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Jake always has many jobs on at any one time, finds a use for everything, is an expert mandolin player, and has compost heaps going back many years. He has a different sense of time to most people in the 21st century, which is explicitly expressed in his idea for creating hedges by putting up bird feeders.
Ah, Liberty!
(2008, 20 min, anamorphic 16mm)
A celebratory portrait of a family's place in the wilderness living, working, playing on a farm throughout the seasons - including free-range animals and children, junk and nature, all within the most sublime landscape. The work aims at a sense of freedom, the scale of which is reflected in the hand-processed Cinemascope format, and focuses on the youngest of the family to show us what's what. There's no particular story; beginning, middle or end, just fragments of lives lived.
Sørdal
(2008, 8min, 16mm)
Set in the Arctic Circle, a solitary person in the landscape is the unseen one behind the camera. After a long hike, he camps through a storm down in a valley facing out to sea. There he comes across an eerie, abandoned film set, built in the late 1970s for a film adaptation of a novel by Norwegian author and Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun.
Origin of the Species
(2008, 16min, 16mm)
Charting the beginnings of the time, through the descent of man, on to an uncertain future - all shot throughout the seasons in the garden of S., who lives in the wilderness and builds contraptions.
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LocationNorthwest Film Forum (View)
1515 12th Ave
Seattle, WA 98122
United States
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