EXcinema

THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS: THREE FILMS BY BEN RUSSELL

In addition to our quarterly programs we will occasionally host visiting experimental filmmakers. We are honored to have Ben Russell on our calendar in November. Ben will be in town November 15th- 17th. He will screen his feature made with Ben Rivers, A Spell to Ward off the Darkness at NWFF on the 15th, host a workshop there on the 16th, then on the 17th he will screen a trilogy of films at EXcinema/ Grand Illusion Cinema. Below is a synopsis of Garden of Earthly Delights.

Taking its title from a 15th century Hieronymus Bosch triptych in which the pleasures of Eden are conflated with the torments of Hell, this new trilogy of (mostly) non-fiction works by artist-filmmaker Ben Russell and occasional collaborator Jim Drain examines the ecstatic limits of utopia in the present. Moving from a documentary portrait of Atlantis to a vertiginous inquiry into immortality to a post-colonial vision of Melanesian cargo cults, these films take a visceral, embodied, and ethnographic approach towards their subject (which is also us). From Malta to Greece to Vanuatu to Miami to Seattle: utopia is now! Or, in the words of Samuel Beckett, "What do we do now, now that we are happy?"