This Long Century presents Ben Rivers

Venue

Metrograph

Address

7 Ludlow, New York, NY 10002

Dates and Times

• Sunday, June 21, 3:30 PM
• Q&A with filmmaker Ben Rivers moderated by This Long Century founder Jason Evans on Friday, June 19th.

Artists and Performers

• Ben Rivers (filmmaker)
• Jason Evans (Series curator and This Long Century founder)
• Mark von Schlegell (science-fiction author, collaborated on narration for Slow Action)
• Herbert Read (poet, "The Autumn of the World" featured in Ijen/London)

Activity Description

This program celebrates the release of Ben Rivers’s latest feature, Mare’s Nest (2025), by presenting three films by the British artist and experimental filmmaker. Rivers's work spans documentary, fiction, and myth.

The program includes:

• Slow Action (2010, 45 mins): A mid-length film imagining a future where rising seas have created isolated islands. Structured as four travelogues, it uses narration co-written with science-fiction author Mark von Schlegell to depict fictional utopian societies in real, remote locations, offering a mythic alternative to typical post-collapse cinema.
• Ah, Liberty! (2008, 19 mins): A personal film rooted in Rivers’s childhood memories of playing in derelict buildings. It captures a feral and unstable sense of freedom in grainy, hand-processed 16mm black and white, resembling a half-remembered dream.
• Ijen/London (2022, 7 mins): Follows a young woman searching for a mythical city, only to find a vast, toxic swamp of sulphurous flames and chemical smoke. Featuring Herbert Read’s poem “The Autumn of the World,” the film creates a bleak and beautiful experience.

Editorial Recommendations

"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... Rivers creates a bleak, beautiful experience that is very hard to shake.” —Series curator Jason Evans, This Long Century.