© Ben Rivers
Screening
2006
Ben Rivers film cycle
Sunday 19 November 2023 • 5:00 PM
Jeu de Paume – Paris
With an introduction of author Vanessa Onwuemezi. With Ben Rivers and Antoine Thirion.
films screened
The Coming Race
2007, 16 mm, black and white, sound, 5 mins
There is a Happy Land Further Awaay
2015, 16 mm, black and white and colour, sound, 20 mins, original version, French subtitles
May Tomorrow Shine the Brightest of All Your Many Days as It Will Be Your Last
2009, 16 mm, black and white, sound, 13 mins, original version
The Creation as We Saw It
2012, 16 mm, black and white, sound, 14 mins
The title The Coming Race, based on a Victorian novel by Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton and considered by some when it was published in 1870 to be a factual work, is about an underground super-race, living under a mountain. The films that make up this programme explore distant temporal or geographical regions by blurring the markers of fiction and documentary: a mysterious and disturbing pilgrimage on the side of a rocky mountain; former desperadoes pursued through a forest by Japanese fighters; the reading of a poem by Henri Michaux to describe unreachable lands, and three mythical stories from the Republic of Vanuatu.