Two Years At Sea and A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness
Ah, Liberty!
(Country: UK; Year: 2008; Director: Ben Rivers)
The frame of a car body hurtling through the mud, children in masks playing nearby. In whose company do we find ourselves and what are the limits of their freethinking ways?
Astika
(Country: UK, Denmark ; Year: 2007; Director: Ben Rivers)
Documentary about a Danish recluse.
The Big Sink
(Country: UK; Year: 1993; Director: Ben Rivers)
The director’s first film, shot while still at school, betrays his obsession for Universal Studios horror flicks and Dreyer’s Vampyr.
The Bomb With A Man In His Shoe
(Country: UK; Year: 2005; Director: Ben Rivers)
The adventures of a shoemaker who lives in a tree.
The Coming Race
(Country: UK; Year: 2006; Director: Ben Rivers)
A large group of pilgrims climbs a rocky mountain slope, whose inhospitable environment is intensified by the roar of high winds.
The Creation As We Saw It
(Country: UK; Year: 2012; Director: Ben Rivers)
Stories from a time when pigs still walked upright: the creation myths ofVanuatu.
Dove Coup
(Country: UK; Year: 2007; Director: Ben Rivers)
The sadness of doves captive in a cage and their efforts to escape – from the cage and even from the film strip.
House
(Country: UK; Year: 2005; Director: Ben Rivers)
A visit, fascinating in its simplicity, to an old, abandoned house whose near-empty yet still-eerie recesses we may secretly observe.
The Hyrcynium Wood
(Country: UK; Year: 2004; Director: Ben Rivers)
A woman fleeing through the woods; an uncertain mystery.
I Know Where I'm Going
(Country: UK; Year: 2009; Director: Ben Rivers)
The extinction of humanity is a long way off but it may be closer than we think – at least in the context of the history of planet Earth.
May Tomorrow Shine The Brightest Of All Your Many Days As It Will Be Your Last
(Country: UK; Year: 2009; Director: Ben Rivers, Paul Harnden)
Old men recite poetry as female Japanese cadets patrol the woods and countryside.
Old Dark House
(Country: UK; Year: 2003; Director: Ben Rivers)
A short excursion to an abandoned house.
Origin Of The Species
(Country: UK; Year: 2008; Director: Ben Rivers)
Documentary about a 70-year-old Scot who has been trying to divine the essence of Darwin.
Phantoms Of A Libertine
(Country: UK; Year: 2012; Director: Ben Rivers)
Mysterious noises accompany pages turning in a traveler’s album from decades earlier.
Sack Barrow
(Country: UK; Year: 2010; Director: Ben Rivers)
A small London factory witnesses the final tremors of the production line before being relegated to the mercy of time.
Secret Things In Progress
(Country: UK; Year: 2014; Director: Ben Rivers)
Karlovy Vary is offering the first look at Ben Rivers’ latest, still-unfinished work. The director will put together a compilation of his most recent footage just before the start of the festival, which will also include the planned film Things, which he is currently shooting at home.
Slow Action
(Country: UK; Year: 2011; Director: Ben Rivers; Writer: Mark von Schlegell)
Four imagined landscapes, four messages from forgotten or perhaps as yet undiscovered locations.
A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness
(Country: France, Germany, Estonia; Year: 2013; Director: Ben Rivers, Ben Russell; Writer: Ben Rivers, Ben Russell; Stars: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe)
A journey of the spirit across northern landscapes towards transcendence.
Sørdal
(Country: UK; Year: 2007; Director: Ben Rivers)
An abandoned, verdantly-located wooden house gradually merges with the landscape. What stories unfolded here before the people left?
Terror!
(Country: UK; Year: 2007; Director: Ben Rivers)
A tribute to the horror masters of the 1970s and 1980s.
This Is My Land
(Country: UK; Year: 2006; Director: Ben Rivers)
Jake, also the subject of Two Years at Sea, lives away from contemporary society, his existence predicated on the greatest self-sufficiency possible. But he also speaks a lot about urban Western man.
Two Years At Sea
(Country: UK; Year: 2011; Director: Ben Rivers; Stars: Jake Williams)
A portrait of Jake, an outsider who lives in the wilderness of his own creation.
We The People
(Country: UK; Year: 2004; Director: Ben Rivers)
Streets, houses without windows, excited voices, and someone fleeing – but there’s not a soul in sight, no trace of life. Still, the tension is palpable.
A World Rattled Of Habit
(Country: UK; Year: 2008; Director: Ben Rivers)
An excursion to the home and garden of globetrotter Oleg, whose experiences in life fundamentally transformed his outlook on the world.
