Film Details

“They could be images unearthed from another era, perhaps from another planet—a verdant dreamscape of fog and forest, photographed on gorgeously distressed black-and-white film stock.” So says Time Out New York ‘s four-star review of the first feature by London experimental filmmaker and gallery artist Ben Rivers, who shoots movies about society’s outsiders on semi-antique cameras and then hand-develops the 16mm film himself. Materiality is one of the hallmarks of Two Years at Sea, a near-wordless portrait of a bearded recluse living close to the land in a dilapidated house in the remote Scottish Highlands. Time almost stands still in this minimalist, monochromatic movie, letting the engaged viewer ponder the hermit’s past and present life and his place in the universe.

A 2012 New York Film Festival selection. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 88 min.