Filmed between 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, Good Luck is a visceral non-fiction portrait of hope and sacrifice in a time of global economic turmoil. “Though much of contemporary thinking would prefer to keep labor and art separated, Good Luck forces them together under an even more unlikely third term, the psychedelic, which has for too long been the domain of reactionaries. With its Latin roots indicating a vision of thought, the psychedelic must be understood as, in at least one sense, analogous with art. Both count their highest achievement as the inducement of reflection. Borrowing from the surrealist tradition, we might take the perfect psychedelic image to be two mirrors gazing directly upon one another. This image is a form of utopia, always awaiting activation by a subject that it desires even as this subject draws it out of the impossible into the actual. Russell’s subject here is labor; to reflect it so fully is a vital achievement.” - Phil Coldiron, CinemaScope

biografia

Ben Russell (1976) is an American 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. Russell was an exhibiting artist at documenta 14 (2017) and his work has been presented at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art Chicago, the Venice Film Festival and the Berlinale, among others. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008), a FIPRESCI International Critics Prize (IFFR 2010, Gijón 2017), premiered his second and third feature films at the Locarno Film Festival (2013, 2017) and won the Encounters Grand Prize at the Berlinale Film Festival (2024). Curatorial projects include Magic Lantern (Providence, USA, 2005-2007), BEN RUSSELL (Chicago, USA, 2009-2011), Hallucinations (Athens, Greece, 2017) and Double Vision (Marseille, France 2024). He is currently based in Marseille, France.

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