The Invisible Mountain & Against Time

In this hybrid of a road movie and a concert film, Finnish musician Tuomo Tuovinen (winner of the Golden Pumpeli in 2015!) travels to Greece in search of a fictional, utopian mountain described in René Daumal’s cult novel Mount Analogue. Russell joins the journey, transforming the road trip into a hauntological pilgrimage through the ruins, dreams, and cultural traces of Eastern Europe. Reality gradually dissolves into hallucination as the hypnotic live performances of the Helsinki-based band Olimpia Splendid intertwine with mythical references.

The screening is followed by the short film Against Time (2022), in which an audio track ripped from a Cyndi Lauper CD melts and mutates into an essay on the relationship between image and sound.

American filmmaker Ben Russell (b. 1976) is one of the most important and distinctive voices in contemporary experimental documentary cinema. Shot on 16mm film, his works combine ethnography, psychedelia, and music. His films have been screened at the Venice Film Festival, the Berlinale, the Locarno Film Festival, MoMA, Tate Modern, and documenta, among many other venues. Russell lives and works in Marseille, France. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.

Ben Russell will be present at the screening.