Ben Rivers grabs short film prize at Rotterdam

British artist / filmmaker celebrated yet another win at the International Film Festival Rotterdam last night after winning a Tiger Award for Short Film for his latest film Things. He had previously won the award in 2008 for his short Ah Liberty! (Dir. Ben Rivers, UK, 2008). Other winners were La Fievere (Dir. Safia Benhaim, France, 2014) and Greetings To The Ancestors (Dir. Ben Russell, USA/South Africa/United Kingdom, 2014). Our Body (Dir. Dane Komljen, Serbia/Germany, 2014) won the nomination for the forthcoming European Film Awards. 

The jury for the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films was comprised of British artist, filmmaker and two-time winner of this award Beatrice Gibson, Dutch programmer and curator Xander Karskens, and artistic director of Image Forum Festival Koyo Yamashita from Japan.

On making their decision, of Things, the jury commented “We chose this film, for its exquisite crafting and ambitious approach to the personal and the diarystic. For its toilet-humour, and the way in which the filmmaker successfully collapses style and rhythm.” La Fievre was a worthy winner “For its poetic and human use of images and sounds to engage with complex political histories. Its feverish pace and arresting cinematography. Its ominous, hallucinogenic soundtrack.” Greetings To The Ancestors was singled out “For its complex approach to ethnographic filmmaking, its sensuous psychedelia, its self-reflexive and intricate weaving of voice and landscape.” The jury selected Our Body as their nomination the European Film Awards nomination “For its raw and direct confrontation with its own subject. Its interweaving of the literary and the philosophical, and compelling juxtaposition of the gentle and the abrupt.”

The three Tiger award winning directors each received a 3,000 Euro prize plus a professional digital video camera from Canon.