THE HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE PRESENTS
TWO YEARS AT SEA BY BEN RIVERS
October 20, 2012
CAMBRIDGE, MA: The Harvard Film Archive is pleased to present TWO YEARS AT SEA BY BEN RIVERS on SATURDAY OCTOBER 20, 2012 featuring the filmmaker in person.
About the filmmaker:
Two Years at Sea
October 20 at 7pm
For his first feature film, Ben Rivers (b. 1972) reunited once more with Jake Williams, the eccentric hermit whose ramshackle life deep in the Scottish wilderness is the subject of Rivers’ This is My Land (2006) and an episode from I Know Where I’m Going (2009). A captivating meditation on solitude and time’s passage, Two Years at Sea is a vivid and at times mysterious portrait of a man who seems to have found a genuine inner peace in the slow unfolding of his ritualized every day. The stunning imagery and visual imagination of Two Years at Sea derive a rare power from Rivers’ dramatic use of the pointedly anachronistic 16mm widescreen format – later blown up to 35mm – to cast a swirling photochemical energy around the ragged forest and overstuffed trailer that together constitute Williams’ home and universe. Almost entirely worldless, Two Years at Sea uses its richly evocative soundscape and extended long takes to fully immerse the viewer into the resonant tranquility of Williams’ life, with photographs and well-worn objects gently hinting but never revealing a pastlife shed long ago.
Directed by Ben Rivers
UK 2011, 35mm, b/w, 86 min
Followed by
Phantoms of a Libertine
An evocative tribute to a photographer friend who passed away suddenly, Rivers’ latest short makes poetic use of images found in the friend’s apartment to share poignantly unknowable fragments of a life’s full adventure.
Directed by Ben Rivers
UK 2012,16mm, color, 14 min
Harvard Film Archive
24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 495-4700
http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa
General Admission Tickets $9, $7 Non-Harvard Students, Seniors, Harvard Faculty and Staff. Harvard students free
Special event tickets (for in-person appearances) are $12.
Tickets go on sale 45 minutes prior to show time. The HFA does not do advance ticket sales.
