The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers

Ben Rivers” film is shot against the stunning backdrop of the rugged Atlas mountains and the bleak, surrealist emptiness of the Moroccan desert. This is where filmmaker Oliver Laxe decided to shoot his film Las mimosas, only to abruptly abandon his own film set and throw himself into a hallucinating adventure filled with savagery and madness. This adaptation of a story by Paul Bowles reveals the illusion of cinema itself layer by layer.

Some fifty years ago Paul Bowles heard a man in a café in Morocco, high as a kite, utter the words that provided the title for this film. Bowles went on to write a story around this incomprehensible statement, creating a story that moves between different realities. Ben Rivers” film evokes its strange images, showing at the same time how far we are prepared to go to make a film.

Filmmaker Ben Rivers is the winner of the EYE Art & Film Prize, a prize awarded to artists whose work explores the interface of art and film.