Ben Rivers is an English experimental filmmaker and artist whose work blends fiction and non-fiction, exploring themes of community, utopia, hermetic living and investigating spaces more broadly. His works include I Know Where I’m Going, Slow Action and Two Years at Sea, which won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at the 68th Venice Film Festival.
Ben Russell is an American artist and curator whose films, installations, and performances seek to engage the history and semiotics of the moving image. His works include the Trypps series, an “ongoing study in trance, travel, and psychedelic ethnographies,” River Rites, and Let Each One Go Where He May.
The duo presented their co-directed feature, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. We were very excited to talk about their work together and apart at our studio space at OCAD U’s Graduate Gallery.
This interview was first published in October of 2013.
