13/08/2024 - The British filmmaker tells us about his interest in repetition, as evidenced in his latest film, and his editing process

(© Locarno Film Festival)

With Competition entry Bogancloch [+see also:
film review
interview: Ben Rivers
film profile], prolific British filmmaker Ben Rivers comes back to Locarno and to visit Jake Williams, the subject of his 2007 short film This Is My Land and the 2011 Venice title Two Years at Sea. After the premiere, Cineuropa sat down with Rivers to discuss the significance of a return and the formal means that naturally fit this encounter.

Cineuropa: Can we start by discussing the act of returning, iterations, and repetitions: does that concept hold any ambivalence for you in your work?
Ben Rivers: Actually, it’s not ambivalent at all. I really love the idea of repetition and repeated gestures: I’m a big fan of Samuel Beckett and even though [his use of repetition] is very different, it informs my thinking. But I do like the idea of being able to go back somewhere and set up similar shots and look for changes.

Can repetition be a measure of change, then?
Yeah, regarding small, subtle changes. There’s certainly something exciting, maybe not in the bombastic sense of the word, but a calm excitement in seeing subtle changes happening within a space or in a life. I have an amazing opportunity because Jake is so open to me as a filmmaker, allowing me to go back to him again. I feel like, you know, most people's lives, they're sort of changing quite rapidly. And so the opportunity to spend time with someone who's maybe a bit more – who's less less concerned with those constant changes, with the speeding up of time... Now, I’m sure that I want to go back again in another, I don’t know, 10 years or so.

In relation to that, I was also thinking about observation: the camera is looking, we, as the audience, are looking, and we are noticing things. Was there an introspective aspect for you as a filmmaker?
It’s still too new and too early to really know that yet. But also, that’s not something I want to address in a full-frontal kind of way. Obviously, I’ve changed, the world has changed, but [in the film] I wanted to get inside somehow… I don’t know the right word, but to get to a point where we’re not just observing on the outside of his life, but trying to get inside to some other level, another realm of reality.

Bogancloch features a lot of wide shots, where we perceive the distance visually, but yet sound-wise, we’re much closer [to Jake] all the time. 
Yes, the sound design is really crucial and it’s something we spent a lot of time on. I always like to have two sets of sound recording in place, so we have the radio mic on him, and then the boom mic further away, so that in the mix, we can choose. And most of the time, we stay close. That keeps the audience in his world. For that reason, I make sure I buy myself a lot of time to really devote myself to the sound. Also, in this particular film, there’s a lot of smoke, too, so I was using these things to evoke another other kind of reality. Again, it’s not just observational, but I was also trying to make it a bit otherworldly.

Usually you do that through formal means, although not exclusively, of course. How do you feel about the label of formalism? 
I got asked questions about form a lot over the years, but I’ve always really believed in a cinema of form and content. Oftentimes, you look at cinema and it’s all about content, or all about the form, but I want them to work together in order to create a universe. It’s also about people, you know? I’m not using any formula to achieve that. It’s about feeling your way through making a film, rather than having a very clear idea of how to achieve this or that.

Regarding the intuitiveness of your working process, what was the editing of Bogancloch like? 
It was really interesting, because you can go in so many different ways. I have a really weird process of firstly, attacking it and and being really brutal [with the footage] for about a week: getting rid of anything that seems vaguely not good, bashing things together and then not looking at it at all for a couple of weeks. From then on, it goes more gradually, with intense periods of working late into the night then ignoring it for a while, before it starts to calm down. I edit myself, so I have the freedom to organise my time, a bit like Jacob organises his own time, which is just not organised.