Co-presented by Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E).

"Slow Action" (2010) is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film which exists somewhere between documentary, ethnographic study and fiction. Earth in the distant future, when the sea level has risen to absurd heights forming new isolated islands and archipelagos. Two narrators read accounts from a great library of Utopias, describing the four islands seen in the film.

"Urth" (2016) - The last woman on Earth, perhaps. Her logbook accounts her struggles with sustaining her world, sanity and dedication to her unforgiving sealed environment. Filmed inside Biosphere 2 in Arizona, it forms a cinematic meditation on ambitious experiments, constructed environments, and visions of the future. The film considers what an endeavor such as Biosphere 2 might mean today in terms of human kind’s relationship with the natural world. Urth takes its title from the Old Norse word suggesting the twisted threads of fate.

Bio: Ben Rivers was born in Somerset, UK in 1972 and lives and works in London. Rivers’ films are typically intimate portrayals of solitary beings or isolated communities; his practice as a filmmaker treads a line between documentary and fiction. Rivers uses these themes as a starting point from which to imagine alternative narratives and existences in marginal worlds. Recent solo exhibitions include Ghost Strata and other stories, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2023); It’s About Time, STUK, Leuven, Belgium (2023); After London, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2022); Urthworks, Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Norway (2021). Rivers’ first feature-length film, Two Years at Sea, was presented in September 2011 at the 68th Venice International Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize.

Ben will be present in person during the film screening.

Location: Critical Media Lab, Peterson Hall, Room 108