“Animists are people who recognise that the world is full of persons, some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others.”

– Graham Harvey, Animism

A trance dance water implosion, a newer line drawn between secular possession and religious phenomena. Filmed in one shot at a sacred site on the Upper Suriname River, the minor secrets of a Saramaccan animist everyday are revealed as time itself is undone. Rites are the new trypps; embodiment is our eternal everything.

"I shot the footage that later became RIVER RITES while making my first feature film; while I knew right away that it wouldn't have a home in my long-form vision of LET EACH ONE GO WHERE HE MAY, it took me years and years of circling back to that single Super 16mm shot to finally understand what it was. Aided by some words from Maya Deren about the nature of dream-time as cinema-time, the new work un/raveled out in front of me..." - Ben Russell