Two Years At Sea (Rivers, 2011): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.45pm
This 35mm presentation was chosen by director Mark Jenkin as part of his 'The Cinematic DNA of Enys Men' season at BFI Southbank. Full details here. (Jenkin and Ben Rivers will take part in a Q&A at the other screening in the season on Janusry 14th. Details here.
Time Out review:
Much online debate has arisen around the
optimal screening conditions for this extraordinary new feature from
British film artist, Ben Rivers.
Photographed with old Bolex cameras and using artificially scuzzed
monochrome 16mm film, when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival it
was shown off of a digital print and many took understandable umbrage:
the visual grain and the texture of the film are as much what it’s about
as its enigmatic subject, a bearded hermit living in the wilderness of
the Scottish Highlands. Like Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Walden’, Rivers’s
film is about the philosophical imperatives that come with a lonely
existence on the outer fringes of society. But this is much more than a
simple portrait of outsider eccentricity, as it also offers that rare
thing in cinema: a vision of true happiness. David Jenkins
Mark Jenkin introduction:
It’s the aesthetic, the grain, the flicker, the texture that draws me
in. But it’s the complete lack of backstory that ensures I keep
returning to this enigmatic masterpiece. What’s not to love about a
Bolex-shot, 16mm black and white, hand-processed genre-bending portrait
of personal contentment?
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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