March 25th, 2015
7:45pm
@ Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz
320 East 6th Street, Austin, TX 78701 (map)
$10.25 (BUY TICKETS)
A SPELL follows an unnamed character through three seemingly disparate moments in his life. With little explanation, we join him in the midst of a 15-person collective on a small Estonian island; in isolation in the majestic wilderness of Northern Finland; and during a concert as the singer and guitarist of a black metal band in Norway. Marked by loneliness, ecstatic beauty and an optimism of the darkest sort, A SPELL is a radical proposition for the existence of utopia in the present. Starring musician Robert AA Lowe (best known for his intense live performances under the name LICHENS) in the lead role, A SPELL lies somewhere between fiction and non-fiction – it is at once a document of experience and an experience itself, an inquiry into transcendence that sees the cinema as a site for transformation. Programmed by Tommy Swenson.
A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS by Ben Rivers & Ben Russell
98 min / DCP / sound / 2013
“…SPELL’s central concern: that utopia is a construction, an experience that is made up, not found but created. All social formations are possessive of their own pleasures and problems. But each may contain moments of rare gratification and meaning. In the film, Rivers and Russell prove themselves able to sculpt (or maybe even just reveal) these pockets of meaning. It makes their docu-fictional exploration of community, seclusion, and rejection feel like that rarest of things: a gift.” – John Semley, SLANT Magazine
A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS (TRAILER) from Ben Russell on Vimeo.