31° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
TFFDOC/INTERNAZIONALE.DOC

A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS

A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS
by Ben Rivers, Ben Russell
Country: France, Estonia
Year: 2013
Duration: 95'


A nameless character finds himself in front of three life choices: first as a member of a commune of fifteen people on an island off the coast of Estonia; then, abandoned and alone in northern Finland; and, finally, at the microphone of a black metal band. Amid evocative images of the pristine environment juxtaposed with the chaos of the main character’s musical performances, these three oxymoronic and extreme experiences evoke the ghosts of utopia and individual freedom in this day and age.

Biography

film director

Ben Rivers

Ben Rivers studied fine arts at the Falmouth School of Art, initially focusing on sculpture and later shifting his interest to photography and film production, with a special eye on documentaries and their contamination with fiction. In 1996, he was one of the founders of the Brighton Cinemateque. He received numerous international awards, including the FIPRESCI Award at the 2011 Venice Film Festival for his first feature film, Two Years at Sea, and Best Documentary at the 2013 Torino Film Festival for A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, which he directed with Ben Russell. He made his comeback in Torino in 2015 with the short A Distant Episode (2015).

FILMOGRAFIA

This Is My Land (cm, 2006), The Coming Race (cm, 2006), Ah, Liberty! (cm, 2008), I Know Where I’m Going (cm, 2009), Slow Action (cm, 2010), Two Years at Sea (2011), Phantoms of a Libertine (cm, 2012), A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (coregia/codirector Ben Russell, 2013), Things (cm, doc., 2014), The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (2015), A Distant Episode (cm, 2015).


Gabriel Abrantes, Ben Rivers:
The Hunchback (cm, 2016).

Ben Russell

Ben Russell (USA, 1976) is a visual artist and experimental filmmaker. His films and performances have been presented in several museums and festivals, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Rotterdam Festival, and the Venice Festival. The series Recent Anthropologies (2000-2009) was presented to the Torino Film Festival along with the documentary Let Each One Go Where He May, his debut into feature films, which won the Cult Award. In 2012 he presented at the Festival Ponce de Léon, directed with Jim Drain, and the following year he won with Ben Rivers the Internazionale.Doc section with A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness. In 2017 he presented in Locarno competiton the documentary feature Good L

FILMOGRAFIA

Six Army Shorts (cm, 1997), Daumë (cm, 2000), Black and White Trypps Number One (cm, 2005), Black and White Trypps Number Two (cm, 2006), Black and White Trypps Number Three (cm, 2007), Black and White Trypps Number Four (cm, 2008), Trypps #5 (Dubai) (cm, 2008), Workers Leaving the Factory (Dubai) (cm, 2008), The Black and the White Gods (cm, 2008), Trypps #6 (Malobi) (cm, 2009), Let Each One Go Where He May (doc., 2009), Good Luck (doc., 2018), The Rare Event (mm, 2018).

Declaration

film director

“By shifting between fiction and document, between ideological inquiry and contemplative engagement, A Spell asks its viewer to participate in a dialogue that is especially relevant to our present moment – where do we find belief in the backward glance towards modernism? What is the place of uncertainty, of mystery, in an existence that has been overdetermined by understanding? What glow remains in the ash of cinema, and how can it be ash if the aura persists?”

Cast

& Credits

REGIA, FOTOGRAFIA, MONTAGGIO
Ben Rivers, Ben Russell
SUONO
Chu-Li Shewring, Nicolas Becker, Philippe Ciompi, Gérard Lamps
MUSICA
Veldo Tormis, Lichens, Queequeg
INTERPRETI
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix
PRODUTTORIs
Nadia Turincev, Julie Gayet
PRODUZIONE
Rouge International
COPRODUTTORE
Indrek Kasela
COPRODUZIONE
Black Hand

TFF

prizes

ITALIANA.DOC 2013

Best Film

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