Ben Rivers
- 2011Two Years at Sea
- 2024Bogancloch
- 2015The Sky Trembles
- 2013A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness
A Somerset-born artist who shoots and hand-develops 16mm film of people living apart from the world, most often one man alone in a Scottish forest.
Rivers grew up in a village in Somerset and studied at Falmouth School of Art, starting in sculpture before moving to photography and Super 8. At art school someone gave him a BFI videotape of four George Kuchar films, and he later called Kuchar the experimental filmmaker who had the biggest impact on him. After graduating in 1993 he taught himself to shoot 16mm and develop it by hand.
In 1996 he co-founded Brighton Cinematheque, which he co-programmed until it closed in 2006. His own films follow people who have stepped away from society, and he builds stories about other ways to live out of what he shoots. Three of them, This Is My Land, Two Years at Sea and Bogancloch, follow Jake Williams, who lives alone in a forest in Aberdeenshire.
Two Years at Sea, his first feature, won the FIPRESCI critics' prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2011. He co-directed A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness with Ben Russell, then took a Paul Bowles story to Morocco for The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers. He went back to Jake for Bogancloch, which premiered at Locarno in 2024.
Films
Where to start with Ben Rivers, in the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
Still from This Is My Land to come. This Is My Land
Rivers's first portrait of Jake Williams, who lives alone among miles of forest in Aberdeenshire, plays the mandolin and keeps compost heaps going back years. He plans to grow hedges by putting up bird feeders.
Still from Two Years at Sea to come. Two Years at Sea
Jake Williams, who spent two years working at sea to pay for a life alone, walks the forest in all weathers, naps in misty fields and builds a raft to sit out on a loch. Nobody explains anything; he plays records, and his cat keeps him company.
Still from A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness to come. A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness
The musician Robert A.A. Lowe lives in a commune on a small Estonian island, then alone in the wilds of northern Finland, then sings and plays guitar in a black metal band in Norway.
Still from The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers to come. The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers
The filmmaker Oliver Laxe, playing himself, walks off the set of his own film in Morocco and into an adaptation of Paul Bowles's 1947 story A Distant Episode. It moves from the Atlas Mountains to the Sahara, between documentary and fable.
Still from Bogancloch to come. Bogancloch
Rivers goes back to Jake Williams in his Scottish highland forest and follows him through the seasons, as other people now and then cross into his life. Like Two Years at Sea, it is in black and white and comes without exposition.