Roger Ballen’s recent film Roger the Rat has been selected to screen at  the distinguished Même Pas Peur: Festival International du Film Fantastique de la Réunion. The 11th edition of the festival will be a live event at the Cinéma Henri Madoré in the city of Saint-Philippe, Réunion Island and will take place this February 17 – 22, 2021.

Roger the Rat is Ballen’s latest short film (25 minutes) and was conceived and completed during the lockdown period in South Africa, inspired by the monograph bearing of the same title released by Berlin publisher Hatje Cantz. Adhering to the distinct Ballenesque aesthetic, these images beautifully oscillate between fantasy, dark humor and unceasing pessimism. Both publication and film render a farcical commentary on the zeitgeist of our time.

Link to the event page

Roger Ballen is known for his disquieting psychological portraits of rural inhabitants on the fringes of South African society. Ballen, who worked as a geologist and mining consultant before starting his career as a photographer, found inspiration for his work in the people he encountered as a mining prospector in the small villages of rural South Africa. Since then, his work has moved beyond observation and documentation toward abstraction and complex narratives. Often photographing at a warehouse for transients on the outskirts of Johannesburg, the photographs move beyond human subjects, and embark on an imaginative physiological journey, which blur the lines of fact or fiction.

Ballen has lived and worked in Johannesburg, South Africa for more than 30 years. In 2001, Ballen’s book Outland won the Best Photographic Book of the Year at PhotoEspaña. Ballen’s other monographs include Ballenesque: Roger Ballen, A Retrospective (2017), Roger Ballen: Resurrected (2016), The Theatre of Apparitions (2016), Asylum of the Birds (2014), Lines, Marks, and Drawings: Through the Lens of Roger Ballen (2013), Photographs 1969-2009 (2011), Animal Abstraction (2011), Boarding House (2009), Shadow Chamber (2005), Platteland (1994), Dorps (1986), and Boyhood (1979). Ballen’s photographs are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.