Ben Rivers makes films.

What sounds succinct on this Brit‘s website makes sense when you delve into the filmmaker’s oeuvre: tracks in the snow, mysterious huts, a deserted yard. Children playing and creatures meandering out of the forest. Ben Rivers’s films open up scope for ideas and dreams. Rivers is a master of the mysterious, the sinister, while also being personal and perceptive. The cat in the snow on 16 mm or the radio in the remote vastness of Scotland. One can detect his personal handwriting all over his films, most of which are black and white – handwriting that may be evocative of early cinema.

He is fascinated by the wilderness, as he describes it – when he films he is „off in the wilderness filming“. One can hardly contact him, no mobile, no internet – he dives deep into his ideas. Later the outside world only receives a short and, when you behold his films, understandable “then (I) got lost in filming”. Ben Rivers says about himself that he had always been a “champion daydreamer” – he carries this feeling into his films. The pictures and dissolves, whether agreeable or oppressive, or even a nightmare, leave plenty of scope for fantasy. Nonetheless, the fairytale-like atmosphere of some of his films doesn’t lose sight of the modern world – both worlds exist side by side, admittedly not without tension.

Rivers sniffs out locations that possess human traces – that in a way function as ghostly places – animate or lifeless. He absorbs the atmosphere and transports it into a film image that pushes the viewer into childlike memories of dream fragments and daydreamy encounters. He started experimenting with film material early on, while still studying at Falmouth’s School of Art. Mostly he worked alone, in collaboration with his 16-mm-Bolex. He is also mostly alone with his material in the editing room. This conscious decision also explains his affinity to people who are isolated and at home outside of our society, in the “wilderness”.

The films are narrations, even if they don’t conform to classic narrational structures, and offer the viewers enough leeway to spin their own stories. Like ever-recurring memories that are only present as collage-like objects. Ben Rivers talks about influences and ideals in an interview; because of his experiences with the Brighton Cinematheque, which he runs together with Michael Sippings, he can’t name any direct influences. He mentions names like George Kuchar and Margaret Tait, John Smith and Man Ray, but fundamentally he feels influenced by what happens round about him.

Ben Rivers’s works are shown regularly at numerous international festivals and galleries and have also been awarded prizes. Rivers received his latest prize in 2008 at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Born 1972 in Somerset, he now works and lives in London.

UK 2004, 1 min
director, photography, editor: Ben Rivers
A small rural village, deserted and utterly still. The camera wanders through the streets. But the soundtrack contradicts the image, giving the impression of a mass demonstration.

UK 2005, 3 min
director, screenplay, photography, editor: Ben Rivers
A sumptuous landscape in luminous black and white. The hills of rural England transformed into a set of deeply resonant shadow-forms, but the land always retains its specificity.

UK 2006, 14 min
director, screenplay, photography, editor: Ben Rivers
The daily routine of self-sufficient Jake Williams, who lives alone within miles of forest in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Jake always has many jobs on at any one time, finds a use for everything, is an expert mandolin player and has compost heaps going back many years. He has a different sense of time to most people in the 21st Century.

UK 2006, 5 min
director, screenplay, photography, editor: Ben Rivers
Thousands of people climb a rocky mountain terrain. Their destination and purpose remains unclear. They crawl and stumble, progress upwards, vanish amid clouds at the top; the inspecificity of their actions and gestures raises questions about human nature. A vague, mysterious and unsettling pilgrimage in which we witness the eternal struggle of humankind to reach the summit.

UK 2008, 16 min
director, screenplay, editor: Ben Rivers
A 70-year-old man living in a remote part of Scotland obsessed for years with “trying to really understand” Darwin’s book, of which he is great fan. While pursuing this passion, he has constantly worked on small inventions to make his life easier.

UK 2008, 20 min
director, screenplay, editor: Ben Rivers
A family's life in the wilderness of the Scottish Highlands, working, playing on a farm through the seasons; free-range animals and children, junk and nature, all within the most sublime of landscapes. A sense of freedom, with no particular story, beginning, middle or end, just fragments of lives lived. A poetic study which contrasts the languid setting with the youngster's restless energy.

UK 2007, 5 min
director, screenplay, photography, editor: Ben Rivers
A ghostly set of images of a scale model of an abandoned house. Lit by torches, we can only catch glimpses, fragments of the building. What we cannot see is just as important as what we can. Crumbling interiors, stained, peeling walls, forgotten furniture, dust sheets on rotting floorboards. The process of abandonment, decay and renewal.

UK 2009, 10 min
director, screenplay, photography: Ben Rivers
Rivers tells the story of a journey to Woodbridge, Suffolk, to visit his friend Ben and his father Oleg...