BEN RUSSELL

Ben Russell will talk about his recent film and installation work within the context of cinema-as-vehicle for altered perceptions, both as a means and an end. Russell gives particular attention to the role(s) of author and viewer as active subjects within this construction.  Along the way, various artists and histories are invoked, such as Luis Buñuel, Stan Brakhage, Janet Cardiff, Maya Deren, Robert Gardner, Anthony McCall, Jean Rouch, and Hito Steyerl.

The artist talk is preceded by a screening of the Ben Rivers & Ben Russell Co-directed feature A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness.

De la remise au goût du jour des mythes païens à l’échec de la vie en communauté, des festivals de heavy metal aux ermites de l’Arctique, de l’éternelle  «magic hour» aux aurores boréales, A spell to ward off the darkness est une quête des possibilités d’existence spirituelle au sein d’une culture occidentale toujours plus séculaire. Ethnographie participative au meilleur sens du terme, A Spell chorégraphie les actions de non-acteurs au milieu de paysages scandinaves réels cherchant ainsi à obtenir un témoignage hybride du passé, du présent et du futur. C’est une archive d’expérience proposant la croyance en la transcendance comme issue viable au fait de vivre dans ce présent.
Entièrement tourné au crépuscule et en Super-16, cette œuvre est née de la collaboration entre deux jeunes artistes de cinéma largement primés : Ben Rivers (Royaume Uni) et Ben Russel (Etats-Unis).
Grâce à cette combinaison de sensibilités artistiques puisant dans le cinéma d’auteur et les films d’horreur côté Rivers et dans l’art conceptuel et l’éthno-fiction à la Rouche côté Russell, ce film en trois parties représente la prochaine étape logique pour les deux Ben. De fait, leurs intérêts convergent depuis un certain temps et c’est avec A Spell que leur deux approches distinctes du cinéma visionnaire se rejoignent enfin. [FID Marseille]

With its very title, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness is a film that announces itself as being in league with forces not entirely of this world. Nevertheless, its makers are two of the leading lights of contemporary experimental cinema precisely because of their pellucid examination of the world around them. […] Russell and Rivers share an engagement with the history of ethnographic film, but only inasmuch as the critiques of its shortcomings and power relations have been fully internalized.

A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness finds their styles melding in the most fascinating ways. There has been a more reserved attitude in many of Rivers’ films, a desire to hang back with patient curiosity, which is distinct from Russell’s more agitated approach. What’s more, Russell’s films have often favoured group dynamics, or at least individuals losing their identities in tandem; Rivers has more often than not worked within a mode of solo portraiture. The resulting collaboration is a dialectical meld of these tendencies. One man (artist-musician Robert AA Lowe) is observed in three distinct situations: first, he participates in a commune on the island of Vormsi, Estonia; he then carves out an existence all alone in the Finnish wilderness; finally, he joins other musicians (Hunter Hunt-Hendrix of Liturgy, Nicholas McMaster of Krallice, and Weasal Walter of the Flying Luttenbachers) as the frontman of a Black Metal band. The resulting film is a triptych fully reflective of Rivers’ and Russell’s longtime concerns: how does one remain a part of society while carving out a space that is, in Heidegger’s terms, true to one’s ownmost possibility? [Michael Sicinski – Cinema-Scope]