IJEN/ LONDON
Ben RIVERS
- UK
- 2022
- 6min
- 12 +
- DCP
- color/black and white
KP
Synopsis
A short film made in preparation for a longer one called After London, where a young woman goes on a quest to find the mythical city of London. On her journey she comes to a vast toxic swamp, spewing smoke and chemical waste, sulphurous flames emerging from the dead land. Looking for inspiration I researched toxic landscapes and found Ijen volcano, East Java. I went down into the crater and filmed the sulphur mine, where a few people work in very difficult conditions to collect sulphur for various uses. This is test footage which became a film, with the poem ‘The Autumn of the World’ by Herbert Read.
Review
IJEN/ LONDON contains landscape images taken from the crater of the Ijen Volcano in Indonesia. The crater with blue flames, the smoke flowing down the pipe, and the rocks covered with white-gray ash are represented as yellow, blue, and orange filtered images. The volcano, which is the background of the film, metaphorically expresses the gloomy landscapes seen in an industrial complex outside the city. In its heat and devastation, Ben Rivers is looking of a sign of what London will look like hundreds of years from now. At the end of the film, English poet Herbert Read's poem ‘The Autumn of the World’ is narrated in a low tone. Rivers, an expert on 16mm film, suggests an uncertain future by showing the toxic gases rising from the volcanic crater, but ultimately, he says that traces of life will remain in it. It is a short film that leaves a strong impression despite the limited number of color schemes.Director
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Ben RIVERS
Ben Rivers studied Fine Art at Falmouth School of Art, initially in sculpture before moving into photography and super8 film. After his degree he taught himself 16mm filmmaking and hand-processing. His practice as a filmmaker treads a line between documentary and fiction. Often following and filming people who have in some way separated themselves from society, the raw film footage provides Rivers with a starting point for creating oblique narratives imagining alternative existences in marginal worlds.