Regarding LSD, brass bells, the youth of today, Terence Malick and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, phase cancellation, the Pine Ridge Reservation, and the Romantic Sublime. Part seven in a series of films about cinema and transcendence. —B.R.
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
Great job, really. To my eye, yours could be an evolution of Derek Jarman's work with super8 and mirror reflections in the '70s. Keep it up.
What first was very meditative and natural became sort of angry and distorted. I thought it was really lovely and I was surprised when I found out it was a mirror all along. Although the last, say, 2 1/2 minutes seem very labored... it was pretty good.
Facing the camera in two films.
