Ben Rivers

Ben Rivers
Master Classes
Visiting Lecturer and Adviser (2021)

Ben Rivers is a filmmaker born in Somerset, UK in 1972. He lives and works in London.

His films are typically intimate portrayals of solitary beings or isolated communities; his practice as a filmmaker treads a line between documentary and fiction. Rivers uses these themes as a starting point from which to imagine alternative narratives and existences in marginal worlds.

Ben Rivers' first feature-length film, Two Years at Sea, was presented in September 2011 at the 68th Venice International Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize.

In 2013 he was awarded the Artangel Open Commission, the product of which, The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, was presented at the derelict BBC Television Centre in 2015 and at The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester in 2016.

Recent exhibitions include the EYE Art & Film Prize with Hito Steyerl and Wang Bing, Amsterdam, (2018); Urth, Renaissance Society, Chicago, (2016); Islands, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Germany (2016); Edgelands, Camden Arts Centre, London, (2015); Fable, Temporary Gallery, Cologne, (2014).