James Benning Movies
James Benning's early films fused the "structuralist" investigations into sound-image relationships of filmmakers like Michael Snow and Hollis Frampton with an interest in narrative and a deep sensitivity to color, light, and landscape. He first grabbed the attention of the avant-garde film world with 8 1/2 x 11 and 11 x 14. Filmed in vivid color in the rural and urban landscapes of his native Midwest, these two films would provide the kernel for his further investigations into film form.His films' rigorous structures -- often based on numerical systems -- and exquisitely composed shots reflect his training as a mathematician, and their frequently autobiographical subject matter draws upon his working-class roots (a rare subject for avant-garde film) and his longtime commitment to political activism.
While his earliest films are mostly concerned with form and narrative, his work in the '80s began to introduce both personal subject matter and documentary elements, at the same time becoming increasingly concerned with the themes of history, memory, and death. American Dreams, Landscape Suicide, and Used Innocence all provide glimpses into the minds of violent criminals through their own words, and are made all the more chilling by Benning's decision to place their crimes in their historical and political and contexts rather than pass judgment on them.
After moving to California in the 1990s, Benning began, with the highly acclaimed Deseret, a series of experimental documentaries investigating the effects of history and politics on the American West. Composed almost entirely of landscapes, these films recall his early experiments with cinematic time and offscreen space, and are considered by many to be among his best.
His central innovation -- the use of narrative to explore cinema's formal possibilities -- has proven to be enormously influential on a number of experimental and independent filmmakers. Echoes of his style and compositional sense have popped up in television commercials since the '70s, and can be found in the work of such directors as Jim Jarmusch, Chantal Akerman, and Rob Tregenza. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide
- 2007
An experimental, non-narrative film on the theme of Americana as it impacts commerce, transportation and the contemporary North American landscape, James Benning's feature-length RR consists of a series of 16mm shots of U.S. railroads. Each shot begins with an empty track - commencing a few seconds before a train enters - and wraps a few seconds after the train disappears from view. In lieu of relying exclusively on the direct sounds of his images to produce aural accompaniment, Benning overlays a combination of political sounds on the soundtrack including Dwight Eisenhower's seminal speech on the military industrial complex (with its extended quotes from the Revelation of St. John) and the sound of an unseen helicopter intended to directly evoke Vietnam. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- 2007
As one of North America's more intriguing and unusual man-made monuments, land artist Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty constitutes an earthwork spiral that extends from one corner of Utah's Great Salt Lake. Created in 1970, it boasts dimensions of approximately 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide. Intriguingly, the Jetty serves as a barometer for surrounding environmental shifts - from changes in the weather, to the shifting angle of the sun's rays as the day rolls forward, to the amount of salt and algae in the water - changes that can render the water purple, blue or gold. With his nonfiction film Casting a Glance, director and conceptual artist James Benning pays tribute to Smithson's creation by visiting and filming the Jetty repeatedly over a period of 1 1/2 years, from May 2005 through January 2007, and cinematographically documenting its shifting aesthetic appearance. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- 2006
In 1977 concerned filmmaker James Benning set out to document what he saw as the urban decay that was sweeping through Milwaukee. The film, which offered sixty, static, one-minute shots of an industrialized metropolitan landscape offered a carefully crafted meditation on the sidewalks, smokestacks, vehicles, and people of the once thriving Wisconsin city. Twenty-seven years later, Benning would return to Milwaukee to explore just how much had changed over the years by essentially shooting the "same" film once again. In capturing the exact same shots the second time around, Benning uses Milwaukee as a microcosm to explore how much the entire country has been affected by nearly three decades of progress and decay. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- 2004
James Benning's Ten Skies consists of ten different shots, each ten minutes long. Each of the shots consists of a straight-on shot of the sky, each sky having very different visual characteristics. The audio consists of the natural sounds heard at each of the locations, providing interesting clues as to where the camera is. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- 2001
In 1947, the United States Air Force introduced the B-52 bomber, a massive aircraft (its wingspan was 185 feet and it weighed 450,000 pounds) designed to carry thermonuclear weapons at high altitudes while employing a minimum of personnel. Throughout the Cold War, the B-52 became the symbol of America's nuclear capability and the workhorse of the Strategic Air Command, but as America's intense rivalry with the Soviet Union and China became a thing of the past, the massive planes became obsolete, and are now a symbol of a bygone era in both military aviation and political gamesmanship. B-52 is a documentary that offers an exhaustive look at the history of this fighting jet and the role it played in American defense, from its initial design and use to its abandonment by the U.S.A.F., including interviews with pilots who flew them and tales of close calls where accidents with the bombers very nearly caused a nuclear disaster. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 2001
Renowned experimental filmmaker James Benning follows up on his El Valley Centro -- a cinematic portrait of California's rural Central Valley -- with this look at Greater Los Angeles. Just as his previous film, Los consists of 35 two-and-one-half-minute unmoving shots. People, trucks and, in one shot, seals venture in and out of Benning's unblinking gaze as he shoots a street in Santa Monica, an empty housing development in Santa Clarita, an aqueduct in Sylmar, and a bi-level highway on Grand Avenue. Several shots in this film echo El Valley Centro -- the cows grazing in the previous film are mirrored by cattle in an abattoir corral in Anaheim and the winding rivers of the Central Valley echo the concrete trenches that line the Los Angeles river. This film debuted at the California Institute of the Arts, where Benning teaches. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- 2000
Master experimental filmmaker James Benning returns with this abstract documentary about California's Central Valley. Consisting of 35 shots, each over two minutes long, the film quietly portrays nature's subjugation to encroaching commercial interests. This film was screened at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- 1999
An opening title describes James Benning's experimental work as a combination of images found in the desert landscape of Death Valley and the Mexican border. What accompanies these images is the soundtrack of the English-language version of Richard Dindo's 1994 Swiss documentary Ernesto Che Guevara, the Bolivian Journal. Most of this documentary is about the last days of Che Guevara as a revolutionary guerrilla in Bolivia. Included are statements from Castro and Guevara as well as quotations from Guevara's journals. The film's imagery consists mostly of landscape shots taken from a stationary camera. The soundtrack is laden with political connotations, which become more powerful when merged with these impressive images. Utopia had its international premiere at the 1999 Rotterdam International Film Festival. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide
- 1998
James Benning wrote, produced, directed and edited this 16mm documentary, part of his series of film portraits of American landscapes and history. The locations seen here are near the intersection of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona -- areas where Indians dealt with problems in the past and present. The fourth site is the working-class German-American Milwaukee neighborhood of Benning's youth -- now an African-American ghetto. The voiceover narrators (Benning, Hartmut Bitomsky, Billy Woodberry, Yeasup Song) speak of historical tragedies, while the work of four visual artists (Caude Monet, Jasper Johns, Alabama's primitivist Moses Tolliver, and a Native American canyon-wall painter) serves as chapter dividers. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- 1989
In a very personal documentary, experimental film director James Benning explores a 1981 killing in Wisconsin, which saw Laurie Bembenek, a beautiful one-time cop and former Playboy bunny, convicted of first degree murder. Featuring re-enactments of her shooting of her husband's ex-wife, and with many interviews with the lady in question, Benning considers questions of justice and law in a wider perspective - as well as the possibility that Laurie may not be guilty of the crime. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1986
Filmmaker James Benning documents two notorious criminal cases in order to prove his thesis that the landscape that surrounds us subtly influences our behavior and the way in which we see the world in this avant-garde docu-drama. The first case he examines is set in Southern California and tells the story of a wealthy suburban teenage girl who brutally stabs a cheerleader on the victim's front porch in 1984. The girl, Bernadette Protti, was tired of being unpopular and teased so she murdered the cheerleader. After the crime is outlined, the next scene features the killer (an actress reciting from police reports and courtroom transcripts) talking to an unseen interviewer about her crime. The second case deals with the notorious Ed Gein, the young man from Wisconsin whose story provided the basis for Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Once again, filmmaker Benning has an actor speaking from the police and court transcripts against a blank wall. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rhonda Bell, Elion Sucher, (more)
- 1982
Director and writer (James Benning) has put a couple from the Midwestern U.S. into New York City, and then used the cityscapes to stand in for any time or place that is relevant to the moment, as the couple reminisce about their past. Still shots, several enigmatic, are interspersed with repeated compositions, or a camera panning across a scene, to subvert the notion of action as a basis for story-telling. Instead, the story -- as such -- is related through voiceovers and telephone conversations worked into a scene. As visual details, narration, and a final phone conversation come to an end, the viewers may at last understand what all those still shots and panning meant. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rebecca Pauly
- 1978
In this experimental film, which might more properly be labeled a moving picture photo album, 60 technically brilliant one-minute films have been put together in one long succession of images. There is no semblance of a story. Construction workers carry art works, industrial chimneys spew their wastes skyward, a moving train is glimpsed, etc. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
