Let Us Persevere in What We Have Resolved Before We Forget (2013)
★★½ — Let Us Persevere in What We Have Resolved Before We Forget (2013)
Ben Russell is an American experimental filmmaker and artist whose work sits somewhere between ethnographic documentary and structural cinema, regularly shown in gallery spaces and festivals rather than conventional theatrical release. This short, running just twenty minutes, was produced with French support through Rouge International and shot on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, a Pacific archipelago whose Melanesian cargo cults (religious movements built around the anticipated arrival of a messianic figure called John Frum) have fascinated anthropologists and filmmakers for decades. Russell had already established himself in avant-garde circles with features like "Black and White Trypps Number Three" (2007) and "Trypps" series work, and this piece sits comfortably within that broader programme of slow, observational cinema indifferent to mainstream distribution.
A-Z World Movie Tour Vanuatu https://vimeo.com/60100859?share=copy Let Us Persevere in What We Have Resolved Before We Forget by Ben Russell is less a film and more an act of quiet observation, minimalist to the point of near-invisibility. Shot on location in Vanuatu, it unfolds in long, static takes with no narration, no interviews, no music, and almost no dialogue. Instead, we’re given moments: a man carving wood, children walking barefoot down a jungle path, villagers tending fires, hands shaping food, smoke rising into the humid air. It feels less like a documentary and more like stumbling upon someone’s home movies, intimate, unguarded, but not quite meant for an audience. There’s beauty in its restraint. The 16mm film grain, the natural light, the unhurried pace, it all creates a meditative, almost sacred atmosphere. You can feel the humidity, hear the distant waves, sense the rhythm of daily life unfolding without performance or pretence. In that way, it succeeds as an ethnographic tone poem, resisting exoticism and instead offering presence. But that same minimalism makes it difficult to connect. With no context or narrative thread, it risks feeling aimless, even voyeuristic, like you’re intruding on lives without ever being invited in. It’s not about anything in the traditional sense, which may be the point, but also makes it hard to engage beyond surface-level appreciation. Visually poetic and respectfully made, but so restrained it borders on inaccessible. A sensory experience, not a story. Best approached as a mood piece, not a film.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2013 | Watched: 2025-09-15
Where to watch (US)
Stream: Fandor Amazon Channel
Physical: Amazon UK
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