James Benning Movies

Stills from a trip in Cuba.

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

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

'After doing a re-make of John Cassevetes’ "Faces" [1968], I decided to re-make another American classic, Dennis Hopper’s "Easy Rider"...

The portrait of an art institution: James Benning explores the building and grounds of the California Institute of Art. Each image creates a tension,...

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...

A narrative film concerning an investigation of two women in time and space, to the point where the investigation becomes the narrative.

This three-channel video installation by James Benning shows three scenes from David Wark Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The...

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

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

Seven entirely static shots make up James Benning's quiet reflection on existence in the Ruhr Valley.

glory is a film about the present, about America and its history of abuse.

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

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

"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...

Data Entry (2014) extends Benning’s interest in the complex cipher systems Kaczynski developed to encrypt his journals. The video focuses on...

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

HF is Benning’s tribute in miniature to legendary filmmaker Hollis Frampton, known for his materialist dissection of the cinema apparatus and...

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