James Benning Movies

Experimental filmmaker James Benning returns with this abstract documentary about California's Central Valley, part 1 of his "California Trilogy"....

Filmed at Benning's home in Val Verde during the first month of the pandemic, the film is a portrait of that time.

61. La Verdad Interior reveals the creative process behind TELEMUNDO [screened in the New Visions section], a collaborative film directed by James...

The 3-channel video installation brings together four histories: the 1860s scorched earth policy of Kit Carson used to drive out the Navajos from...

The Fitzgerald classic as you've never seen it, transposed to a Los Angeles of sleek modern architecture and strip-mall foot clinics.

Lunch Break features 42 workers as they take their midday break in a corridor stretching nearly the entire shipyard.

O Panama features a man confined to his apartment on a winter day as he suffers through an illness. Built on the polarity between hot and cold, the...

"Ash 01 is a declassified recording made from a B-52 bomber on December 26, 1972 during the Christmas carpet bombing of Hanoi." - James Benning. This...

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

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

Sixty one-minute shots with no camera movement. This tension between painterly and cinematic space is not only experienced as an intellectual...

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...

It centers on Allensworth, the first self-administered African-American municipality in California, showcasing the buildings of the now-abandoned...

One half filmed in 1977, one half filmed 27 years later.

Intercourse between two people who never appear on the screen at the same time. An exploration of sex and male/female identities.

A crisscross through the USA, carving it up into a series of static shots of just under two minutes, one for each state, presented alphabetically,...

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

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...

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...