American artist Ben Russell will attend Oulu Music Video Festival as this year’s international guest director. Based in Marseille, Russell is regarded as one of the leading figures in contemporary experimental cinema.
American artist Ben Russell will attend Oulu Music Video Festival as this year’s international guest director. Based in Marseille, Russell is regarded as one of the leading figures in contemporary experimental cinema. His music-infused films have been presented at major festivals and institutions including the Venice Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Locarno Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art and documenta.
OMVF will present four films by Russell. A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (2013, co-directed with Ben Rivers) is a hypnotic black metal film that follows ambient musician Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe from the forests of Hyrynsalmi, Finland, to a metal club in Oslo. Finland figures prominently also in The Invisible Mountain (2021), which receives its Finnish premiere at the festival. Part road movie, part concert film, the psychedelic hybrid unfolds as a hauntological journey through the ruins of Eastern Europe, featuring Tuomo Tuovinen and Helsinki-based stoner rock trio Olimpia Splendid — comprising Heta Bilaletdin, Jonna Karanka and Katri Sipiläinen.
The retrospective is completed by the short films Against Time (2022) and Black and White Trypps Number Three (2007). Russell and Olimpia Splendid will also perform live at the festival’s after party.
Experimental City Symphonies and Queer Classics
Oulu Music Video Festival has long explored the intersection of experimental cinema and music video. In the special screenings City Symphony 2.0 and Babylon Revisited, curated by artistic director Joel Karppanen, cities emerge simultaneously as spaces of memory, desire and capitalist rhythm.
The programme includes modern city symphonies such as Cityscape (2019) by Michael Snow, Money (1985) by Henry Hills and Blight (1996) by John Smith. Also featured is Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999), the Turner Prize-winning work by Mark Leckey, alongside queer classics Amphetamine (1966) and Christmas on Earth (1963–1965) — Barbara Rubin’s legendary double-projection 16mm film. The programme culminates in the world premiere of A Radial View, a new expanded cinema performance by Helmi Kajaste (Draama-Helmi), Käärmeniemi and Mika Taanila.
The festival’s Hauntopolis theme is further explored through a screening of William Basinskis’s Disintegration Loop 1.1 (2004), one of the defining works of hauntological music. The club programme extends the theme with Finnish DJ Jam “J”, whose unpredictable selections draw retro-futuristic machine music and contemporary underground tracks into a single continuum.
More Derek Jarman and Simon Fisher Turner
Alongside the previously announced opening event Blue (Live), OMVF expands its focus on filmmaker Derek Jarman and composer Simon Fisher Turner. Curated and introduced by Jarman’s longtime producer and collaborator James Mackay, the programme presents some of the duo’s finest music videos from the 1980s.
The festival will also screen the rarely seen documentary Will You Dance With Me? (1984), set in a London gay club and released only twenty years after Jarman’s death. Simon Fisher Turner will additionally feature in Instability of the Signal, a visual album directed by Isao Yamada.
Oulu Music Video Festival takes place for the 33rd time from 27–30 August, as part of the Oulu2026 programme. Tickets for the opening event Blue (Live) are currently on sale; further tickets will be released in August. The full programme will be announced in June.
