Slow Action

2010
Country: UK
Duration: 40 mins
B&W/colour,
Sound: Optical
Ratio: Anamorphic
Available Format/s: 16mm / BluRay / HD Digital file / DCP
Original Format: 16mm film

  ,

Slow Action is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film which exists somewhere between documentary, ethnographic study and fiction. Slow Action applies the idea of island biogeography – the study of how species and eco-systems evolve differently when isolated and surrounded by unsuitable habitat – to a conception of the Earth in a few hundred years; the sea level rising to absurd heights, creating hyperbolic utopias that appear as possible future mini-societies.

Slow Action is filmed at different sites across the globe: Lanzarote – a beautiful strange island known for its beach resorts yet one of the driest places on the planet, full of dead volcanoes and strange architecture; Gunkanjima – an island off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan, a deserted city built on a rock, once home to thousands of families mining its rich coal reserves; Tuvalu – one of the smallest countries in the world, with tiny strips of land barely above sea level in the middle of the Pacific; and Somerset – an as yet to be discovered island and its various clades .

Slow Action, (2010) has been commissioned by Picture This and Animate Projects. Supported by Bristol City Council, Elephant Trust, Arts Council England, Daiwa Japan Foundation and the British Council.

More works by Ben Rivers

We’d love to hear from you

If you would like to speak to a member of our team, please get in touch

Skip to content