Artist in Focus: Bogancloch

One conception of cinematic duration involves holding a shot for a long time, even—or especially—when dramatic action is scarcely present. A second form, less frequently deployed but equally a rebuff to a culture obsessed with speed and novelty, is created when a director commits to filming the same subject again and again, over a period of many years. Both come together in Bogancloch, Ben Rivers’s return to the boreal existence of Jake Williams, the unassuming star of This is My Land (2006) and Two Years at Sea (2011). Shot on colour and hand-processed black-and-white film using anamorphic lenses, Bogancloch is a textured portrait of a man who once travelled the oceans but now chooses to live alone in rural Aberdeenshire, in a home that gives the film its title.

The movie is also, less obviously, a record of the friendship between he and Rivers, a filmmaker who knows that many other worlds can be discovered within this one, far from the madding crowd.

Curated by Erika Balsom