What is magic? In this new short by Ben Rivers and Ben Russell, the viewer is thrown into a recording studio in Paris, where a group of prominent intellectuals of contemporary culture is gathered. The camera of this occasional pair tries to follow the multiple possibilities discussed for “Résistance” (the title of Jean-François Lyotard’s never staged exhibition, planned as a follow-up to his famous “Les Immatériaux”). On a first impression, it seems like Rivers and Russell produced what initially appears to be a document on a debate on structuralist philosophy. However, the film shows us a double exercise on the “appearance dimension” (a concept quite present in this branch of philosophy). Both in the ensuing debate, and through the work involved in the directing and editing, “The Rare Event” takes us to a universe of constant transitions between different dimensions of the reality observed. What could be a document of the “Résistance” becomes a true portal merging all dimensions into a single one. Ben Rivers and Ben Russell have had their work presented in previous editions of Curtas and in 2015 held an exhibition at Solar. (PD)