James Benning
Date of Birth: 28 Dec 1942
Country: USA
Biography: James Benning (born 1942) is an American independent filmmaker and educator. Over the course of his 40-year career Benning has made over twenty-five feature-length films that have shown in many different venues across the world. Since 1987, he has taught at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). He is known as a minimalist filmmaker.
Total Credits at Criticker: 9 (Actor), 40 (Director), 13 (Writer)
Biography submitted by Rivette
Find more information about James Benning at The Internet Movie Database
Titles you haven't rated - Actor (9) | Director (40) | Writer (13)
James Benning took the founding of the New York Times in 1851 as a departure point for his latest film, Deseret. In the best Benning tradition, Deseret unfolds magnificent landscapes captured with a stationary camera during a dozen-odd trips throughout the calendar year. (imdb)
Your probable score
?
A laconic mosaic of single-shot sequences, each offering some sort of image/sound pun or paradox (imdb)
Your probable score
?
Your probable score
?
"Landscape Suicide" Benning continues his examination of Americana through the stories of two murderers. (imdb)
Your probable score
?
Part 1, which is exactly 60 minutes long, is seven or eight long shots in which the camera just sits there recording whatever happens to be in its view. First we get a shot of a two-lane road in a tunnel, then we get a shot in a steelworks, then we get one outside an airport... and so on. Part 2, which is also exactly 60 minutes long, is one continuous shot of a smokestack. Sometimes it belches smoke. Sometimes it doesn't.
Your probable score
?
James Benning takes the road movie seriously, making his circular trip across the U.S. a marvelously photographed, intensely felt, and disturbing portrait of contemporary America.
Your probable score
?
James Benning shots 10 minutes of 10 skies in 10 different moments, from the same place, the back of house.
Your probable score
?
RR consists of 37 static shots, filmed in 37 locations in the USA, crossed by passing freight trains. (MUBI)
Your probable score
?
Twenty Cigarettes is a game with its own rules and a game with film history: In Benning's "Screentests" we watch twenty individuals, each of them smoking a cigarette. Some of them are familiar, like Sharon Lockhart. Others we've never seen before. But they all give us time to read their body language. We embark on a journey across foreign facial landscapes, through long inhalations into the inside of their bodies, and into the invisible world of their thoughts as we imagine them to be. (MUBI)
Your probable score
?
Los Angeles is depicted in 35 stationary shots, each 2 1/2 minutes long, in this non-narrative film. (imdb)
Your probable score
?
James Benning's "Four Corners" uses a specific geographical location to pose larger questions about the United States. Here, the geographic and wholly imaginary place Four Corners, that favorite tourist destination where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet, becomes a kind of theoretical ground zero, the site from which Benning can give voice to other, pointedly unofficial American stories. (imdb)
Your probable score
?
Grand Opera marks a stock-taking of Benning's work and his life, presenting a personal and artistic autobiography woven together with a series of events dealing with the historical development of the number pi, Benning's travels, and homages to Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, George Landow (Owen Land), and Yvonne Rainer. (imdb)
Your probable score
?
American Dreams is chock full of concrete, discrete elements that comprise an American iconography of the past three decades--a collection of Hank Aaron memorabilia, excerpts from the diary of Arthur Bremer, public speeches and snippets of popular songs.
Your probable score
?
Your probable score
?
Using experimental narrative structure as his vehicle, Benning recreates the sensationalized and controversial circumstances surrounding Lorencia Bembenek, aka "Bambi", former "Playboy bunny" turned cop, turned accused and convicted killer who disappeared after a daring escape from prison. (imdb)
Your probable score
?
A series of two and a half minute shots in California's Great Central Valley.
Your probable score
?
Faces (2011) - TV Movie
An "unexpected venture into the world of 'found footage' filmmaking." As Benning explains . . . he's Reconstructed Cassavetes's Faces in such a way that: 1) it's comprised entirely of shots of single faces, 2) each actor and actress is on screen as long as he or she is in the original and 3) each scene is exactly as long as it is in the original. (mubi.com)
Your probable score
?
Two Cabins (2011) - Short Film
Benning reconstructed Henry David Thoreau's and Ted Kaczynski's iconic cabins, and uses these structures to reflect on utopian and dystopian versions of social isolation. On the surface Benning's two cabins are night and day, invoking contradictory sets of reclusive intentions and divergent paths leading back out. Deeper inquiry reveals the Thoreau / Kaczynski equation to be inspired. (Amazon [adapted])
Your probable score
?
A wooded mountain range. On the lower right, half-hidden by a tree, a wood cabin. In the distance the dip of the ridge connecting two peaks. One landscape. Four images. Four seasons. Spring, fall, winter, summer. Each image inviting a contemplation of the same space. The voice of the artist, James Benning, reading extracts from the writings of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber (retinalechoes.com)
Your probable score
?
In 54 static shots, Benning provides a picture of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. With the exception of the first three shots, he chooses areas that are normally closed to the public: offices, store rooms and empty corridors. A characteristically meditative Benning, even though this time he chooses to stay indoors. (iffr.com)
Your probable score
?
Your probable score
?
Lengthy static shots of various backroads, smaller interstates, quieter roads, and lonely highways. (themoviedb)
Your probable score
?
Casting a Glance is a tribute to the American artist Robert Smithson. Between May 15 2005 and January 14 2007, I made 16 trips to the Spiral Jetty. Created in 1970, the Jetty is a 1,500-foot long spiral-shaped jetty extending into the Great Salt Lake in Utah constructed from rocks, earth, salt and red algae.
Your probable score
?
Your probable score
?
i94 (1974) - Short Film
Intercourse between two people who never appear on the screen at the same time. An exploration of sex and male/female identities. (Letterboxd)
Your probable score
?
Your probable score
?
L. Cohen is a view of an Oregon farm field, observing the passing moon and a sunset, and incorporating a Leonard Cohen song. (MUBI)
Your probable score
?
"Him And Me" has Benning's hallmarks: pristine cinematography, a quasi-autobiographical stance, and a minimalist structure that juxtaposes concrete realities with off-screen mysteries. This is one man's journey through the American landscape as he has experienced it since the 1950's: a richly hued vision punctuated by the sexual, musical, and political mores of three decades. (imdb)
Your probable score
?
35 static 150-second shots that examine the disparate geography of California (TimeOut)
Your probable score
?
Michigan Avenue (1973) - Short Film
A formalist investigation into a relationship between two women.
Your probable score
?
The United States of America (1975) - Short Film
A camera mounted in the backseat of the car of Benning and Gordon traveling across the US east to west, takes in the passing terrain as framed by the windshield (IMDb).
Your probable score
?
It centers on Allensworth, the first self-administered African-American municipality in California, showcasing the buildings of the now-abandoned town and looking for the traces of a Black cultural history.
Your probable score
?
James Benning explores the USA in his customary lengthy, static shots. Yet the images of landscape and cityscape aren’t just riffing on the film of the same name he made in 1975, but also ask: is it ever really possible to represent a place? (mubi.com)
Your probable score
?
O Panama's elegant montage denotes a subject that is always on the verge of collapse. This episodic narrative 'opens spaces in the film where the audience can enter into the story with its own experiences.' (imdb)
Your probable score
?
Filmed at Benning's home in Val Verde during the first month of the pandemic, the film is a portrait of that time.
Your probable score
?