Ben Rivers (born 1972) is an artist and experimental filmmaker based in London, England. His work has been screened at film festivals and galleries around the world and have won numerous awards. Rivers' work ranges in themes, including exploring unknown wilderness territories to candid and intimate portraits of real-life subjects.
Rivers studied fine art at Falmouth University. [1] His practice as a filmmaker treads a line between documentary and fiction. Often following and filming people who have in some way separated themselves from society, the raw film footage provides Rivers with a starting point for creating oblique narratives imagining alternative existences in marginal worlds. Rivers often employs analogue media and hand develops 16mm film, which shows the evidence of the elements it has been exposed to – the materiality of this medium forming part of the narrative. [2]
Rivers's first feature-length film, Two Years at Sea, was presented in September 2011 in the Orizzonti section at the 68th Venice International Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI International Critics prize. His second feature, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness , [3] was made in collaboration with American filmmaker Ben Russell, a frequent collaborator, and premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2013.
His feature films are distributed in the United Kingdom by SODA Pictures, [4] Cinema Guild [5] and KimStim [6] in North America.
Rivers is represented by Kate MacGarry Gallery, London. His most recent feature directed in collaboration with Thai filmmaker Anocha Suwichakornpong Krabi, 2562 (2019) premiered at Locarno Film Festival. Rivers is a Media City Film Festival Chrysalis Fellowship [7] recipient (2020), after screening his work at the festival since the early aughts.
Artist-in-focus screenings and retrospectives include Courtisane Festival; [17] Pesaro International Film Festival; London Film Festival; Tirana Film Festival; Punto de Vista [18] Pamplona; and Karlovy Vary International Film Festival [19]
Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter, film producer and Professor at Tama Art University in Tokyo. Working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, Apichatpong has directed several features and dozens of short films. Friends and fans sometimes refer to him as "Joe".
John Smith is a British avant garde filmmaker noted for his use of humour in exploring various themes that often play upon the film spectator's conditioned assumptions of the medium.
The cinema of Thailand dates back to the early days of filmmaking, when King Chulalongkorn's 1897 visit to Bern, Switzerland was recorded by François-Henri Lavancy-Clarke. The film was then brought to Bangkok, where it was exhibited. This sparked more interest in film by the Thai Royal Family and local businessmen, who brought in filmmaking equipment and started to exhibit foreign films. By the 1920s, a local film industry had started and in the 1930s, the Thai film industry had its first "golden age", with a number of studios producing films.
Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard are British artists and filmmakers.
Max Hattler is a German video artist and experimental filmmaker. He created the kaleidoscopic political short films "Collision" (2005) and "Spin" (2010), abstract stop motion works "Shift" (2012) and "AANAATT" (2008), and psychedelic animation loops "Sync", "1923 aka Heaven" and "1925 aka Hell" (2010).
Luke Fowler is an artist, 16mm filmmaker and musician based in Glasgow. He studied printmaking at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. He creates cinematic collages that have often been linked to the British Free Cinema movement of the 1950s. His para-documentary films have explored counter cultural figures including Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, English composer Cornelius Cardew and Marxist-Historian E. P. Thompson. As well as portraits of musicians and composers he has also made films and installations that deal with the nature of sound itself. Luke Fowler has worked with a number of collaborators including Eric La Casa, George Clark and Peter Hutton, Mark Fell, Lee Patterson, Toshiya Tsunoda, and Richard Youngs. He collaborated with guitarist Keith Rowe and film maker and curator Peter Todd on the live sound and film work The Room.
Semiconductor is UK artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. They have been working together for over twenty years producing visually and intellectually engaging moving image works which explore the material nature of our world and how we experience it through the lens of science and technology, questioning how these devices mediate our experiences. Their unique approach has won them many awards, commissions and prestigious fellowships including; SónarPLANTA 2016 commission, Collide @ CERN Ars Electronica Award 2015, Jerwood Open Forest 2015 and Samsung Art + Prize 2012. Exhibitions and screenings include; The Universe and Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, 2016; Infosphere, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2016; Quantum of Disorder, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, 2015; Da Vinci: Shaping the Future, ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 2014; Let There Be Light, House of Electronic Arts, Basel 2013 ; Field Conditions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2012; International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2012; New York Film Festival: Views from the Avant Garde, 2012; European Media Art Festival, 2012; Worlds in the Making, FACT, Liverpool 2011 ; Earth; Art of a Changing World, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2009 and Sundance Film Festival, 2009.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival takes place every January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Delphinium: A Childhood Portrait of Derek Jarman is a 2009 short film based on the early years, work, and legacy of British artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. The film was written and directed by Matthew Mishory and produced by Iconoclastic Features. It was executive produced by Andreas Andrea. Keith Collins, Jarman's surviving muse, participated in the making of the film. Jonathan Caouette served as a creative advisor. It is the first narrative work about the life of Derek Jarman.
Ben Russell is an American artist and experimental filmmaker. Russell developed his reputation over the numerous shorts he made throughout the 2000s, many as part of his "Trypps" series, and as the curator of the Magic Lantern Cinema in Providence, Rhode Island. In 2009, he made his acclaimed feature debut, Let Each One Go Where He May, shot in Suriname in a series of 13 long takes accomplished with a Steadicam. Both a Guggenheim Fellow and participating artist in documenta 14, Russell's work has been described as drawing on elements of ethnography, psychedelia and Surrealism.
Donna McKevitt is an English composer based in London. She studied viola with Gustav Clarkson and voice with Linda Hirst and gained a BA Hons in music at Kingston Polytechnic.
Anocha Suwichakornpong is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter and producer. She is currently Professor of Film at Columbia University, where she advises thesis students in the MFA Film Program and teaches film directing. She was formerly Visiting Lecturer on Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University.
Šejla Kamerić is a Bosnian visual artist.
Daria Martin (born 1973) is a contemporary American artist and filmmaker based in London since 2002. Working primarily in 16mm film, her work has been exhibited in twenty four solo shows in public galleries including at the Barbican, The New Museum, and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and group projects such as Performa 07. According to Martin, her films address the space between disparate states of being – levels of consciousness, internal and social worlds; subject and object. Martin's films also often explore the differences and similarities between other artistic mediums including painting, performance, dance, and sculpture.
Mundane History is a 2009 film by the Thai film-maker Anocha Suwichakornpong. She wrote, co-produced and directed the film. It is described as “one of the most startling and original feature debuts of recent years", and received its world premiere on 10 October 2009 at the 14th Busan International Film Festival in South Korea. It was the first Thai film to receive the country's most restrictive viewing rating, due to a scene of full-frontal male nudity and masturbation.
Lis Rhodes is a British artist and feminist filmmaker, known for her density, concentration, and poeticism in her visual works. She has been active in the UK since the early 1970s.
Heather Phillipson is a British artist working in a variety of media including video, sculpture, electronic music, large-scale installations, online works, text and drawing. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2022. Her work has been presented at major venues internationally and she has received multiple awards for her artwork, videos and poetry, including the Film London Jarman Award in 2016. She is also an acclaimed poet whose writing has appeared widely online, in print and broadcast.
Emily Wardill, is a British artist and film maker.
By the Time It Gets Dark, known in Thai as Dao Khanong, is a 2016 Thai drama film directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong. In August 2016, the film was selected to compete for the Golden Leopard at the 69th Locarno Film Festival. It won the 2016 Suphannahong National Film Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing. It was also selected as the Thai entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.
Kent Tate is a Canadian artist and filmmaker living in British Columbia. Tate is known for his single-channel video installation works.
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