River Rites

United States, Suriname

2011

10 Min

Color

None

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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SOUND Ben Russell

Venice (Horizons), New York (Views from the Avant-Garde), Rotterdam (Spectrum Shorts), London (Experimenta)

Synopsis

“Animists are people who recognise that the world is full of persons, some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship to others.“ (Graham Harvey, Animism)

Trance dance and water implosion, a line drawn between secular freak-outs and religious phenomena. Shot in a single-take at a sacred site on the Upper Suriname River, the minor secrets of an animist are revealed as time itself is undone. Rites are the new Trypps, embodiment is our eternal everything. –Venice Film Festival

Director

Ben Russell

Ben Russell is an itinerant photographer, curator, and experimental film/videomaker whose works have screened in spaces ranging from 14th Century Belgian monasteries to 17th Century East Indian Trading Company buildings, police station basements to outdoor punk squats, Japanese cinematheques to Parisian storefronts, and the Sundance Film Festival to the Museum of Modern Art (solo). He has made films about the assassination of Easter Island, the divining powers of Richard Pryor, and the end of the world. A Guggenheim Fellowship recipient in 2008, he began The Magic Lantern screening series in Providence, Rhode Island and currently resides in Chicago, Illinois, USA. —gf.org