Robert Gardner’s films include DEAD BIRDS (1963), RIVERS OF SAND (1975), and FOREST OF BLISS (1986). He founded the Film Study Center at Harvard in 1957, and began the teaching of film in the university, where he served as director of the Visual Arts Center and chairman of the Visual and Environmental Studies Department.
Studio7Arts is pleased to congratulate Ben Rivers, recipient of the 2013 Robert Gardner Film Award. The $10,000 award is dedicated to the recognition and support of a non-fiction film or videomaker currently active and demonstrating the most original approach to the representation of actuality.
For the award’s inaugural year, Studio7Arts solicited nominations for those moving image makers whose interpretation of the world through nonfiction media is compelling and innovative, who demonstrate individuality, conceptual strength and skillful execution, and who make a meaningful contribution toward expanding the potential of moving images to testify to our shared humanity.
A still from Ben River’s TWO YEARS AT SEA. Jake lives in the middle of the forest. He builds a raft to spend time sitting in a loch living the radical dream he has as a younger man, a dream he spent two years working at sea to realize. Photo courtesy of Ben Rivers.
The work of these nominated artists was then reviewed by an anonymous panel of jurors comprised of leading programmers and scholars in the field of independent non-fiction cinema.
The jurors admired Rivers’ camerawork and sound design for creating powerful, visceral experiences for audiences who are, for the most part, unfamiliar with the environments depicted. Rivers’ emphasis on visual storytelling, in particular, his refusal of verbal explanation, allows viewers to make their own way through the films and challenges them to attend to and appreciate the density of existence.
The panel furthermore noted that Rivers shares the sensibility of Robert Gardner, in that both artists’ films are exceptionally beautiful, and convey a sense of awe and respect for their subjects and the world they inhabit and create.
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