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

Director in Person
$12 Special Event Tickets
Directed by Ben Rivers.
With Oliver Laxe.
UK, 2015, 35mm, color, 98 min.
Arabic, Spanish and French with English subtitles.
Print source: Jacqui Davies Limited

Ben Rivers’ latest feature is a diptych film that brings together, but does not necessarily join, its two halves—the first a lyrical documentary of a Moroccan film shoot and the second a dark, minimal adaptation of Paul Bowles' nightmare fable A Distant Episode. Galician director Oliver Laxe becomes the bridge between the film’s two worlds when he wanders, in seeming exasperation, away from his production and into the dangerous, unmeasured desert. Although Rivers avowed fascination with Paul Bowles inspired his first foray into pure fiction, his film remains firmly rooted in the daydreaming realism for which he is best known, exploring as much the slow mysteries of place as the iconic cultural specificities and mythos of the desert.

The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers introduction and post-screening discussion with Haden Guest and Ben Rivers. ©Harvard Film Archive

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