Films by Ben Rivers
One of the foremost names in contemporary experimental cinema, over the last couple of decades the British artist and filmmaker Ben Rivers has built up a formidable body of work that moves seamlessly between documentary, fiction, and myth; between the theatre and the gallery. Though crackling with the rich textures of analogue, his films often scan seemingly post-apocalyptic landscapes: still, sparsely populated, and laden with memories. Such is the case in his most recent, Don DeLillo-riffing feature, "Mare’s Nest" (2025), as well as in the selection of short and mid-length films assembled by Metrograph here—from "Urth" (2016), filmed inside the Biosphere 2 complex in Arizona, through to "Sack Barrow" (2011), which captures an electroplating factory in the weeks around its closure, consigned to becoming a relic.
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Ah, Liberty!
Directed by Ben Rivers | 19 mins | 2008
"Ah, Liberty!" is rooted in Rivers’s own childhood memories of the derelict buildings that served as a playground for him and his friends. This freedom, which feels feral and unstable, is captured here in grainy, hand-processed 16mm black and white, playing... -
Slow Action
Directed by Ben Rivers | 45 mins | 2010
Set in a distant future in which rising seas have reduced the Earth to a scattering of isolated islands, "Slow Action" draws on narration written together with science-fiction author Mark von Schlegell to conjure fictional utopian societies from real, remot... -
Sack Barrow
Directed by Ben Rivers | 21 mins | 2011
Founded in 1931 to provide employment for disabled ex-serviceman, Servex was a metal electroplating factory that sat on the outskirts of London. In 2010, after years of financial difficulty, the business went into liquidation. Rivers captures its final mont... -
Urth
Directed by Ben Rivers | 19 mins | 2016
Written by the science-fiction author Mark von Schlegell and filmed on location at the Biosphere 2 complex in Arizona, site of one of the twentieth century’s most infamous utopian experiments, "Urth" unfolds according to the logbook of a grad student—the la... -
Ghost Strata
Directed by Ben Rivers | 46 mins | 2019
An elliptical travelogue buoyed by the poetry of W.S. Merwin. Fernando Pessoa, and Muriel Rukeyser, "Ghost Strata" is divided into 12 sections, one for each month of the year over which it was shot. As he roves, Rivers trains his camera on piquant details, ... -
Look Then Below
Directed by Ben Rivers | 22 mins | 2019
The final installment of a hypnagogic trilogy created with sci-fi author Mark von Schlegel, following "Slow Action" (2010) and "Urth" (2016), "Look Then Below" is structured as a future explorer’s diary, its strange and haunting subterranean landscapes capt... -
Ijen/London
Directed by Ben Rivers | 7 mins | 2022
On a quest for a mythical city, a young woman finds only a vast toxic swamp of sulphurous flames and chemical smoke. With Herbert Read’s poem “The Autumn of the World” drifting across this devastated landscape, Rivers creates a bleak, beautiful experience th...
