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| Ben Rivers and Jake Williams in Bogancloch Photo: Margaret Salmon |
Director Ben Rivers' documentary Two Years At Sea (2011), which won the FIPRESCI prize at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, introduced cinema audiences to the enigmatic forest dweller, Jake Williams. After two years on a Merchant Navy ship, Williams retreats to the Aberdeenshire forest where he creates a rickety home. Told without the use of dialogue, Rivers' self-contained, year-long documentary is a purely observational work, with Williams as the sole occupant of the camera’s frame.
Rivers' sequel, Bogancloch (2025), returns to the Aberdeenshire forest and Williams' hermit-like existence, expanding his chronicle of one man's search for an alternative way of living. Only this time, Rivers documents Williams' interactions with occasional people who happen across his forest abode.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Rivers discussed how cinema takes root in one's life and the consequences of the power imbalance in film exhibition. He also reflected on two different types of boredom, one of which Bogancloch falls under, and humankind’s dark past and still present-day.
Paul Risker: How would you describe your relationship to cinema?
Ben Rivers: It's a big question because I've dedicated all of my adult life to it. I grew up in a village and there was no cinema as such. There was just a video shop in the basement of the church and that's where I got all my horror movies from. And I'd always set the timer on the VHS recorder for the films that were shown late at night on BBC2 and Channel 4. So, my introduction to cinema was on the small screen, but I was immediately hooked by discovering all these different kinds of films that weren't the ones playing in the cinema.
When I went to art school, I started running a film club, and after art school, I moved to Brighton and ran the Brighton Cinematheque for almost ten years with some friends. And that was my film school — I'd watch everything. It wasn't any particular type of film. It could be studio pictures, world cinema or even trashy films. Then I started making my own films and, for the last twenty years, cinema and my life have been deeply intertwined. Almost everything I do has some kind of relationship to cinema.
[…] I often make films by myself or with small crews. It's a good way to interact with the world, and to meet and collaborate with people. For example, spending time with someone like Jake Williams, who I maybe wouldn't have met if I wasn't a filmmaker. We have an almost twenty-year friendship that's based around this series of films we've made together.
PR: To allude to the famous François Truffaut quote and say that cinema is more important than life leaves you open to ridicule. However, life is merely a shell we fill with things that give us meaning, purpose and connection, and for some of us, cinema is that beating heart.
BR; It encompasses all parts of life. There's this great book, Brian, by Jeremy Cooper, who is a friend of mine. It is about one guy who goes to the BFI regularly, and if you go to the BFI, you will recognise these people, who are mostly men and are there every day. Jeremy had witnessed these people from afar every time he went to the BFI, and he just imagined the life of one of them.
It's a very sensitive and loving book about the importance of cinema, especially to someone like Brian who is socially awkward, finds life difficult, and the outside world overwhelming. But he's able to experience the world through cinema. You could easily make fun of those people, but the book doesn't do that at all. It's very tender, so I'd highly recommend it.
PR: Listening to you speak about having a diverse appreciation for film, how does your overall filmography fit into cinema?
BR: My background is a love of cinema in a very eclectic sense, and I've always tried to avoid labels, even though obviously other people want to or have to put my work into different boxes. But I'm just making films, and I think of cinema as this huge variety of different kinds of work that all exist alongside each other. And I want my films to be just like that — another part of cinema, rather than an experimental film, a documentary, or whatever label it might be.
This comes partly from my programming days running the cinema in Brighton, and one of my big inspirations was Amos Vogel, who wrote Film as a Subversive Art. That book was based around him programming a cinema in New York. He would put Hollywood films with science fiction or an avant-garde film. So, it's all this stuff pulled together.
One of the problems with distribution now and the situation we find ourselves in is, like you were explaining [pre-interview] about where you live, cinemas are beholden to these huge distributors who say you've got to show our Hollywood film for three weeks. They've got so much power, and that's degraded the openness or ability for audiences to see other kinds of films, and to just see it all pulled together.
In the Seventies, my dad would go and see [Michelangelo] Antonioni and [Ingmar] Bergman because it was on at the cinema. But you can't imagine an everyday person now going to see the latest Apichatpong Weerasethakul film. It's like you've got to know that stuff and source it and make an effort.
I've gone off track there, but the point is, I like the idea of everything being available. To me, it's not a huge leap that an everyday or a non-cinephile audience could understand a film like Bogancloch. But if you're not used to seeing that kind of film, then maybe the first time you see something like that, then it's a bit of a leap; maybe a bit challenging. And this idea that people want and expect a certain kind of film is wrong. If you talk to financiers, they're talking about character development, and this is just something that people have become used to because they've been fed it over and over again. I don't actually believe that people do need that. People are much more intelligent than we're led to believe.
PR: In Bogancloch, your return to document another period in Jake's life shares a connection to Richard Linklater's intent for Boyhood (2014). There are other examples of films whose gaze observe a lengthier period of time, and your film is connected with this specific approach to cinema, which is so often about moments.
BR: This is the privilege of becoming someone's friend, someone like Jake, who was open to me returning. He got the earlier films, and he is very much involved in me going back. He's interested in it himself as a non-cinema person, to have this recurring and long-term record. I only wish I'd met him ten years earlier, so we could have started sooner. But we will carry on. We have talked about doing another one in a decade or so. It will be interesting to see where he's at when he's in his eighties.
The interesting thing about going back to someone is not only the person themselves but thinking about, even if their world hasn't changed that much, how the world outside the picture has changed. And it obviously has. No person who has lived through the last ten years can ignore the fact that we went through a pandemic for two years. Whatever you think of it, even if you're some conspiracy theorist, it happened. There were two and a half years, almost three, of worldwide chaos and madness. You hope that those things, without even having to talk about them, are embedded somewhere in the film when you think about where we are in time.
PR: Those that remove themselves from society can face recriminations for taking the easy way out. Instead of creating change or at least trying to, they choose to abandon society. Bogancloch is leaning into the contrast of isolation and the wilderness opposite the urban and collective belonging.
BR: Yeah, that's what I hope and that's partly why I really wanted to bring other humans into this one. It was clear that Two Years At Sea needed to be something quite insular and really just about him. It was partly a challenge to see if I could make a feature film which is just this one person with no dialogue. But Two Years At Sea has a different kind of sombreness and in this one I wanted to open it up and bring in other people because I felt it was necessary to show that side of Jake. He's not completely isolated and he is aware, and he does have some connections with other humans.
If you separate yourself entirely from society, is that helping in any way? Maybe you're just helping yourself, and there's something selfish about that. But then, at the same time, you're also not contributing any waste or whatever else it might be.
People go and live those kinds of lives for very different reasons. I was always clear that I didn't want to explain his reasons because that's what's interesting. And that's what was interesting when I first started meeting people like Jake. It's more important to see a life like that and think as a viewer about what might drive you to that kind of life and leave it open, because as soon as you label or explain something, then that's it, that's the way to read it.
PR: The moment you have a question that you attempt to answer, it is taken over by narrative.
BR: Yeah, and as much as I like narrative films, for a lot of my own, I want to keep the narrative open. There is still a narrative, but an open narrative that allows the viewer to contribute and think for themselves and open up questions that aren't necessarily answered. But you can think about it and many people tell me about the ideas and thoughts that have lingered afterwards. Whereas, with a lot of plot-based films, they're very exciting, and you're in the moment, but they tend not to linger so much because there's nothing really to think about afterwards. Okay, you might think about why you're excited about something, but in terms of continuing to intellectually wonder, I personally prefer films that are ambiguous and have unanswered questions.
PR: Bogancloch is a film that sits between a tight narrative structure that explains itself, and the experience of dreaming, that can be full of ambiguity. We're driven to understand everything we see and hear, and the latter can therefore challenge us and take us out of our comfort zone. However, so much of this is attributable to the fact that we've been programmed to respond and behave a certain way.
BR: Absolutely, and I think about this a lot. Even if I'm showing everyday things, I want Bogancloch to feel like a dream, and that kind of fragmentary thing where you can jump from one thing to another. There are clearly pointers to that as well. We see Jake asleep, and then we move into a completely different space.
The connection between dreams and cinema has been spoken about for the past hundred years, and how brilliantly cinema has the means to capture that in a way that not many other mediums can. With the power of an edit, you can move between two completely different spaces the way you can in a dream, and that's so exciting to me. And I feel that is forgotten a little bit when you're so beholden to a plot, and you're explaining everything.
When I go and see the big Hollywood films, I'm excited in the first 20 to 30 minutes because it's about world building. But after a while, I switch off because it's just explaining everything that's happening, and it's boring. Some people might use that same word for my films because it seems there isn't much happening, but it's a different kind of boredom. There's the boredom of being told everything, and then there's the more challenging type of boredom, where the film is asking you not to turn off and be passive. Instead, it's asking you to be attentive and to be involved. You have to commit and be open to it, I suppose. And if you've just finished a hard day's work, and you just want to turn off, then that might not be what you want to do, which is okay.
Going back to dreams, there are obviously some filmmakers that have meant a lot to me. David Lynch in particular, who I was sure was going to produce more amazing work — it's so sad that he passed away. He's obviously a great proponent of that and somehow managed to infiltrate Hollywood and make films that are popular. Like Twin Peaks: The Return, which is completely mental and follows no conventional structure from any other TV show. And millions of people watched it, which is really crazy.
Unfortunately, a lot of the people who hold the purse strings are the most conservative because they're worried about numbers, etc. And often there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and not enough trust in the filmmakers and the audience.
PR: What does Jake and the film itself say about the world we're living in right now?
BR: I'll have to think about that one. I've always been careful not to make this seem like it is propaganda and say this is the way we should live, because I don't think that. And some people find this way of life very difficult. It's physically tough, and it can also be mentally tough.
For me, it's about possibilities. So, the world we live in is all structured around a capitalist model, and we're all tied into that through what we buy, what we watch and what we eat. It's all about control and money, and a lot of that feels like control is out of our hands. Whichever way we lean, it's a powerful worldwide way of living.
With someone like Jake, it opens up the idea that there are different ways of living, and this is just one of those ways. So, there's a hopefulness to it in what are pretty dark times. I'm sure humanity has lived through many dark times before, but it now feels especially dark because not only are there many terrible things happening, but we see it, and we're aware of it, and it's not changing. That seems very dark to me.
If we'd seen what was happening in the Holocaust earlier, you'd think that America would have gotten involved in World War II sooner. But now, you have things like that happening and people are sort of standing by and governments don't do anything. It's a terrible time, and we need to think about other possibilities, other ways of interacting with each other and being more thoughtful.
My next film is with kids in a world without adults. There's no explanation of what's happened, but it is fiction. This young girl wanders through this world, meeting other kids and communities. Being mostly in colour and shot on Super 16, it's superficially and aesthetically very different to Bogancloch. But the two films are a pair in my mind. They're like siblings because they're both about living outside conventional society, which is what interests me.
Bogancloch plays in UK cinemas from May 30th.
