Metrograph

“To celebrate the release of Ben Rivers’s latest feature, Mare’s Nest (2025), This Long Century presents a program of three films by the British artist and filmmaker, a formative figure in experimental cinema whose prolific body of work moves seamlessly between documentary, fiction, and myth. With his mid-length film Slow Action (2010), Rivers imagines a distant future in which rising seas have reduced the Earth to a scattering of isolated islands. Structured as four travelogues, the film draws on narration written together with science-fiction author Mark von Schlegell to conjure fictional utopian societies from real, remote locations, while refusing the familiar violence of post-collapse cinema in favor of something stranger and more mythic. Ah, Liberty! (2008) is a more personal film, rooted in Rivers’s own childhood memories of 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 out like a half-remembered dream. Finally, Ijen/London (2022) follows a young woman on a quest for a mythical city, finding 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 that is very hard to shake.” —Series curator Jason Evans, This Long Century

Ah, Liberty! (Ben Rivers, 2008, 19 mins)

Ijen, London (Ben Rivers, 2022, 7 mins)
Slow Action (Ben Rivers, 2010, 45 mins)

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Ben Rivers is regretfully unable to join us for this screening. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Any customers who purchased tickets can request pass(es) redeemable for a Metrograph screening of their choice. In place of a live appearance, Ben Rivers will be providing a pre-recorded introduction.

Pre-recorded video introduction by filmmaker Ben Rivers on Sunday, June 21st