Private Utopias. The films of Ben Rivers. Attended by the director!

In its list of best avant-garde films of the last decade, Film Comment magazine placed Ah, Liberty! by Ben Rivers in third place: this was testimony to the growing prestige acquired by this British filmmaker’s body of work. Rivers makes his films solo, with an old Bolex wind-up camera, processing the film in the kitchen sink and editing the image and sound himself. He tends to film eccentric characters who live on the fringes of civilization, creating private utopias, or in wild and wonderful places. His quest is to see how “landscapes mirror the personality of their inhabitants, people who arrived there after a long journey, stopped and created their own worlds”. This session, made in collaboration with L’Alternativa and the distributor LUX, is an anthology of his major films, focusing particularly on his recent work. [Screening in 16 mm]

Origin of the Species, 2008, 16’
House, 2007, 5’
We the People, 2004, 1’
This Is My Land, 2006, 14’
Ah, Liberty!, 2008, 20’
I Know Where I’m Going, 2009, 29’