Pictured above: Rock Bottom Riser (2021) by Fern Silva
Advance tickets available here
($2 discount for Cinematheque members—walk up sales only!)
presented in association with the Roxie Theater and Canyon Cinema

Hawaii’s swirling, roiling flow of volcanic lava provides the anchor for this energetic, visually and sonically bold cinematic essay by experimental filmmaker Fern Silva. Filled with astounding telescopic imagery and engaging digressions into philosophically related phenomena, Rock Bottom Riser breaks temporal and generic boundaries, touching upon everything from astronomy to geology to ethnography, from the origins of the universe to colonialism’s remapping of our planet. Silva erupts all notions of what one might expect from “nature documentary” filmmaking, and shows viewers familiar worlds made alien. Rock Bottom Riser will screen in 35mm.

[A] psychedelic mixtape of a movie. (Beatrice Loayza, The New York Times)

Fern Silva’s debut feature flips the idea of a nature documentary on its head and melts it down into something that feels almost entirely new. (David Ehrlich, Indiewire)

Feels in harmony with the spiritual essence of Earth’s eruptions and mankind’s efforts to control them.
(Glenn Heath Jr., The Film Stage)

Invigorating…Otherworldly…Hypnotically beautiful. (Keith Watson, Slant)

SCREENING: Rock Bottom Roser (20212) by Fern Silva; 35mm, color, sound, 70 minutes.

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