Movies: James Benning

In this short black and white study Benning uses dissolves, shifting camera angles and cross-fades to experiment with narrative structure....

Benning's 18-minute study of moonfall in the morning sky-- A close cousin to his film "two moons". A lovely rendition of 'Moon River' accompanies the footage, filmed July 24th, 2019....

A filmed homage to Sam Shepard, in a single fixed frame where the treetops sway under a moving cloud cover. Orchestrated by the camera in this forest environment, brief spoken and sung interludes evoke touching dedications punctuating the solitude of...

James Benning’s PLACE is a multi-part work that deepens the artist’s longstanding engagement with marginalized artists and creators. Over the course of nine months, Benning traversed the United States in pursuit of traces left by eight so-called ‘out...

Except for some additional ambience, the entire sound track of this film has been taken (without permission) from: Ernesto Che Guevara, the Bolivian Journal. A film by Richard Dindo. The images were found in the desert landscape from Death Valley sou...

Presented on a computer, "Pascal's Lemma" features mathematics (diagrams, equations, questions), biographical information about Blaise Pascal, and scrolling text sourced from the news....

"scorched earth is a film that is part of the Untitled Fragments Project. It's 60 minutes at dusk, just one shot of the burned over forest (from this summer's fire) near my Two Cabins in the Sierra Nevada." - James Benning. This work first premiered ...

The 3-channel video installation brings together four histories: the 1860s scorched earth policy of Kit Carson used to drive out the Navajos from their homeland in Canyon de Chelly, the 1967 execution of Che Guevara in Bolivia, the 1972 carpet bombin...

signs is a sobering continuation of Benning’s career-long interest with the written word as image, text as vision: a silent parade of stills showing dozens of cardboard signs asking for money, food, and kindness....

Three-channel HD video (color/sound), 18 minutes...

[...] And then there’s the largest and fastest growing archive of all time, the Internet, and in particular YouTube. I started here playfully looking in different directions—an early performance by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, a Ché Guevara interview, ...

In James Benning’s film Concord Woods (2014), we watch a replica of Henry David Thoreau’s famous cabin at Walden Pond. The cabin is first shown during the summer solstice, graced by the golden sunlight......

A short film about femininity...

Short by James Benning....

A short film about masculinity...

Stills from a trip in Cuba....

At Northwestern University, where he teaches at the time, Benning gives a short interview to some student filmmakers. He then uses this material to once again engage the optical printer....

Twenty-four hours in the life of a factory worker....

Twenty-two minute tracking shot through campgrounds in Southern Wisconsin...

The 16mm test roll for James Benning's feature-length film TEN SKIES. 74.78 is part of Mike Plante's Lunchfilm series of commissioned shorts (made for the cost of a lunch between Plante and filmmaker James Benning)....