James Benning Movies

Using experimental narrative structure as his vehicle, Benning recreates the sensationalized and controversial circumstances surrounding Lorencia...

This is multifaceted look at the landscape and history of Utah (or Deseret, as the Mormon Church prefers to call it). Benning condenses 93 news...

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

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

A film looking at the past to warn about the future, from a little boy's point of view. A companion to ‘American Dreams (lost and found)’...

Los Angeles is depicted in 35 stationary shots, each 2½ minutes long, in this non-narrative film, part 2 of Benning's "California Trilogy".

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

Lengthy static shots of various backroads, smaller interstates, quieter roads, and lonely highways.

An experimental film portraying different skies in very long takes.

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

Filmed on November 21 and 22, 2018 in Valencia, California. A gibbous and full moon rising.

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

James Benning appropriates a 14-second excerpt from his own film Time and a Half (second entry in his filmography), dissects the scene into its...

Four landscape shots containing a replica of Ted Kaczynski’s cabin, one shot per season. On the soundtrack, Benning reads extracts from...

One man's journey through the American landscape as he has experienced it since the 1950s.

Last week I made a film of 49 of my T-shirts called Fresh Air. It was to be purely structural. For sound I recorded (in sync) the quiet ambience of...

James Benning watches tv with a young girl.

Twenty-two minute tracking shot through campgrounds in Southern Wisconsin

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