Good Luck
Co-presented by the Gallery and SAW Video Media Art Centre, the film Good Luck by American artist, filmmaker and curator, Ben Russell, was introduced by the artist, who also participated in a post-screening Q & A with the audience.
A visceral non-fiction portrait of hope and sacrifice in a time of global economic turmoil, Good Luck was filmed at a state-owned, large-scale underground mine in the war-torn state of Serbia, and an illegal mining collective in the tropical heat of Suriname.
Formed between dark and light, cold and heat, North and South, Good Luck immerses its viewer in the precarious natural and social environments of two distinct labor groups so as to better understand the bonds that men share. Here is the human foundation of capital, revealed.
In Serbian and Saramaccan with English subtitles.
Ben Russell (b.1976, USA) is an artist, filmmaker and curator whose work lies at the intersection of ethnography and psychedelia. His films and installations are in direct conversation with the history of the documentary image, providing a time-based inquiry into trance phenomena and evoking the research of Jean Rouch, Maya Deren and Michael Snow, among others. Russell received a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2009 and 2017 FIPRESCI International Critics Prize and has presented his work at documenta 14, MOMA NYC, Tate Modern, and the Centre Pompidou. Curatorial projects include Magic Lantern (Providence, USA, 2005-2007), BEN RUSSELL (Chicago, USA, 2009-2011), and Hallucinations (Athens, Greece, 2017). He currently resides in Los Angeles.