James Benning Movies

"Sandy Ding's WATER SPELL is a bold, abstract journey that takes us into the psychic interior of our very cellular structure... and back. For me,...

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

Iron ore is super heated in a blast furnace to make pig iron, which in turn is used to produce steel. The making of steel is a continuous process....

Text by Theodore J. Kaczynski, made of scans of a document from an FBI Laboratory, about the danger of experiments with accelerated particles.

A short film by Gary Mairs written by James Benning. Stars Amy Seimetz.

Except for some additional ambience, the entire sound track of this film has been taken (without permission) from: Ernesto Che Guevara, the Bolivian...

The American filmmaker James Benning has been one of the outstanding exponents of the structural film since the mid-1970s. Bennings artistic position...

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...

Celebrated for his minimal, monumental landscape studies, James Benning turns to the intimacy of the portrait in his latest film, TWENTY CIGARETTES....

Shots of 13 great lakes in the USA, with each shot containing half water and half sky or land.

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

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

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

A document of one of the most famous 66 miles of railroad track in the world including the Tehachapi Loop.

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

Twenty-two minute tracking shot through campgrounds in Southern Wisconsin

A view of an Oregon farm field, observing a solar eclipse and incorporating a Leonard Cohen song.

A film by James Benning

I just a did a film with my ‘Acting Bad’ class called After Warhol, where we watched a few of the Warhol screen tests and then mimicked...

After having shared a common experience in Cuba, twelve filmmakers say goodbye to return to their countries and make a pact: to make a collective...