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- You are here: Home > LOOK THEN BELOW
You are here
Online -
Tuesday, November 24, 2020 - 19:00
Written by:
Mark von Schlegell
Cast:
Therese Heningsen
Cinematography:
Ben Rivers
Editing:
Ben Rivers
Sound:
Ben Rivers, Christina Vantzou
Music:
Christina Vantzou
Producer:
Josephine Lanyon
Revisiting the journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth genre of speculative fiction, LOOK THEN BELOW carries the audience under vermillion skies, over iridescent oceans and through a lush forest of irradiated vegetation into a new anthropocenic landscape shown through a combination of 16mm footage and CGI. Accompanied by a scratchy, distant voice-over, written in the fashion of a logbook, the film descends into the netherworld of caverns carved out in the depths of time, once held remnants of lost civilisations, that foretell a future subterranean biotope, occupied by a species that will have evolved from our environmentally challenged world. At once hypnotic and strange, the film blurs the lines between past, present and future into a liminal space that is hauntingly beautiful. (Oana Ghera, BIEFF 2020)
Director:
BEN RIVERS (born in 1972) is an artist and experimental filmmaker based in London. His work ranges from themes about exploring unknown wilderness territories to candid and intimate portrayals of real-life subjects. Rivers's practice as a filmmaker treads a line between documentary and fiction. He prefers to use near-antique cameras and hand develops the 16 mm film, which shows the evidence of the elements it has been exposed to – the materiality of this medium forming part of the narrative. His films have been shown in prestigious festivals all over the world and he is the recipient of numerous prizes including: FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, 68th Venice Film Festival for his first feature film, TWO YEARS AT SEA.
Contact:
LUX Moving Image
Festivals, awards:
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2020 / New York Film Festival 2020 / Viennale 2020 / Hong Kong International Film Festival 2020
“While BEN RIVERS is often understood to be a cinematic chronicler of land and sea, working mostly in the realist tradition, there has always been a thrumming energy throughout his work that points toward the surreal, the uncanny, or even the post-human. Ben Rivers’ third collaboration with writer Mark von Schlegell, takes this tendency to its outer reaches. An exploration of the Wookey Hole caves in Somerset, this film infuses recognizable forms – rock, water, and air – with a hallucinatory neon glow.” (Michael Sicinski - Viennale)