From pagan re-enactors to Scandinavian communes, black metal concerts to Arctic hermits, and the forever Golden Hour to the Northern Lights, A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS is an inquiry into the possibilities of a spiritual existence within an increasingly secular world.
Co-directed by Ben Rivers (UK) and Ben Russell (USA), A SPELL is a feature-length film that lies between fiction and non-fiction, a record of experience that proposes belief in transcendence as a viable outcome of living in the now.
+Coming In Summer 2012+
This trailer features music by LICHENS and LITURGY and was supported in part by PUMA.Creative Catalyst Award in partnership with BRITDOC Foundation - britdoc.org/catalyst
As Daniele Ionio has said, the sounds are "elegant, occasionally mellow, but also capable of wounded rage. They do not hark back to years gone by (as happens unfortunately with other jazz players today), they don't celebrate, they ARE. Perhaps they also anticipate what is about to be born, at the same time saying, through their truthfulness, that everything is still to be decided. This is indeed the hope, the Black Hope, of Sam Rivers.