With the series Persistence Of Vision, we have tried to highlight films by experimental and
microbudget filmmakers from around the world. This month’s installment will highlight the films
of Ben Russell, with a program of five films covering a wide variety of his recent work. Rock Me
Amadeus By Falco Via Kardinal By Otto Muehl (2009) is part karaoke film and part remake of
Viennese actionist Otto Muehl’s classic, Kardinal. Here Muehl’s pomposity is replaced with a
playfulness as the provocation becomes a comic exercise in music video. Trypps #7 (Badlands)
(2010), the most recent of Russell’s longrunning Trypps series, highlights a perennial theme:
the experience of the divine in the everyday world. The Garden Of Earthly Delights triptych containing the films Let Us Persevere In What We Have Resolved Before We Forget (2013), Atlantis (2014), Greetings To The Ancestors (2015) is a search for Utopia. These films blend
documentary and fiction, ethnography imagined and experienced, postcolonial awareness and
dream cinema, religious ritual and secular experience of trance states. Positioning himself
between the reflexive ethnographies of Jean Rouch and the structuralist films of Michael Snow, and taking influence from Herzog’s documentaries especially in his notion of the ecstatic truth Russell’s films have created a singular viewpoint as he grasps for the Utopian.
Persistence Of Vision also includes a musical component. Performing before Ben Russell’s
films, we are especially excited to music from Boston improvisational master Vic Rawlings. Sstay tuned for programs from Zachary Oberzan, Raymonde Carasco, and more to be
announced in the coming months.
