Stanford Cinematheque presents AGAINST TIME, their Spotlight event for the Spring quarter. Join us for a screening of selected works from Ben Russell’s filmography, including Atlantis (2014), River Rites (2011), Black and White Trypps Number Three (2007), and Against Time (2022).

In addition to this screening, Ben Russell will join us on Tuesday, April 1 (5:30pm) for an artist talk discussing Direct Action, his 2024 documentary co-directed with Guillarme Cailleau. Direct Action (which will have its Bay Area premiere the following evening with SF Cinematheque) serves as a portrait of one of the most high-profile militant activist communities in France: a 150-person rural collective that successfully resisted an international airport expansion project in 2018, created an autonomous zone between 2012 and 2018, survived multiple violent eviction attempts by the French state, and prompted a new ecological movement in 2021, culminating with the Battle of Sainte-Soline in March 2023, an act of collective direct-action against water privatization met again with the brutality of State violence.

Russell (USA, 1976) is a Marseille-based artist, filmmaker and curator whose work lies at the intersection of ethnography and psychedelia. Russell was an exhibiting artist at documenta 14 (2017) and his work has been presented at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art Chicago, the Venice Film Festival and the Berlinale, among others. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008), a FIPRESCI International Critics Prize (IFFR 2010, Gijón 2017), and premiered his second and third feature films at the Locarno Film Festival (2013, 2017). Direct Action is his 5th feature-length film.

This event is generously co-sponsored by the Department of Modern Thought & Literature, the Europe Center, and the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, the France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Department of Art & Art History.

VISITOR INFORMATION: Oshman Hall is located within the McMurtry Building on Stanford campus at 355 Roth Way. Visitor parking is available in designated areas and is free after 4pm on weekdays. Alternatively, take the Caltrain to Palo Alto Transit Center and hop on the free Stanford Marguerite Shuttle. If you need a disability-related accommodation or wheelchair access information, please contact Julianne Garcia at juggarci@stanford.edu. This event is open to Stanford affiliates and the general public. Admission is free.

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