Screening followed by Q&A with director Ben Russell
(2013) France / Germany / Estonia. 98min.
Directors: Ben Russell & Ben Rivers
From pagan re-enactors to failed communes, black metal festivals to Arctic hermits, and the forever Golden Hour to the Northern Lights, 'A Spell to Ward off the Darkness' is an inquiry into the possibilities of a spiritual existence within an increasingly secular Western culture.
Described by the Hollywood Reporter as “an art film that is as uncompromising as it is uncommercial,” Ben Rivers and Ben Russell's new film is certainly difficult to categorise. Falling somewhere between a gallery piece and a cinematic work, incorporating everything in between the two, 'A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, follows an unnamed character through three seemingly disparate moments in his life. Eschewing explanation in favour of mood, we follow our protagonist through the commune of a 15-person collective on a small Estonian island; alone as he travels through the beautiful and austere wilderness of Northern Finland; and during a concert as the singer and guitarist of a black metal band, again, somewhere in Norway.
Described by the filmmakers as a work “marked by loneliness, ecstatic beauty and an optimism of the darkest sort, 'A Spell to Ward Off Darkness,' is a radical proposition for the existence of utopia in the present.”
This film is a must see for anyone with an interest in art, cinema, life and living. This is cinema for cinema's sake, a pulsating, beating heart, insisting on it's own existence, in the banal black hole of mainstream cinema.
What the Critics Are Saying:
'Ben Rivers and Ben Russell's ethnographic exploration for a kind of profound utopian moment acquires its clearest, and most intimate, articulation in their long takes of Robert A.A. Lowe and other corpse-painted musicians'
-John Semley, Slant Magazine
'Rivers and Russell have certainly cast a spell that sticks.'
-Eric Kohn, IndieWire
'If the film does not necessarily achieve total transcendence, it offers experimental-film aficionados a sporadically arresting trip.'
-Ronnie Scheib, Variety