James Benning Movies

[...] And then there’s the largest and fastest growing archive of all time, the Internet, and in particular YouTube. I started here playfully...

One day, father makes a shocking decision in a family gathering. The family disagrees with it and against him in the very beginning. However, they...

A new video work by American avant-garde filmmaker James Benning explores the videos of Russian activist/activist-art group Voina (“war”).

Scrolling excerpts from the diary of George Wallace's would-be assassin Arthur Bremer at screen bottom, Hank Aaron cards and ephemera from his entire...

Composed of just four shots in which Clara McHale-Ribot, Rachel Kushner, Richard Hebdige, and Simone Forti read quietly to themselves, the film...

Stills from a trip in Cuba.

Between July, 2007 and June, 2008, veteran independent film-maker,James Benning built replicas of two iconic American Cabins in a remote part of the...

In three virtuosic sequences created entirely in-camera, Benning alternates contrary camera movements in a trio of Chicago locations with increasing...

Filmed in Sierra Nevada, California over one day. Static and still shots of the actual landscape and environments in the area.

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

"Benning's landscape works, with their meticulous, reverential compositions, have been located in the history of American realist painting and...

A stunning study of real-time light changing from day to night which was filmed in a forest high up in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains

65 shots making up a cryptically alluded-to narrative: a lesbian couple's Midwest travels, a hitchhiking young man's journeys, the story of a man who...

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...

an excerpt of a conversation between James and I during the Fall of 2019 - Santa Clarita, CA

A stretch of highway blanketed by snow becomes the stage for one accident after another in US 41, perhaps Benning’s first disaster movie, or a...

Filmed in Sierra Nevada, just like Benning's Spring Equinox, but this time during a different season. Consists of static shots of the actual...

Twenty-two minute tracking shot through campgrounds in Southern Wisconsin

One-hour-documentation of James Benning's participation in the Moving Billboard project.

A film by James Benning