Ben Rivers

Ben Rivers explores wilderness environments and creates self-contained worlds in his lush, cinematic films. Unapologetically beautiful and without a tinge of irony or nostalgia, his films walk a line between anthropological study and narrative escape. His film Origin of the Species (2008), which was projected inside a shack built within a gallery, offered a intimate portrait of an old man from Scottish highlands, who invents his own tools and systems for day-to-day subsistence while considering profund questions about the universe and human knowledge. "Music is a secret key to my films," Rivers says. "It influences the ideas, the rhythms of editing, the mood of films depending on what is dominating my listening at the time, but the music rarely ends up in the finished film, so its there without being there."