James Benning
Also Known As: 제임스 베닝, 제임스 배닝
Biography: Over the past thirty-five years James Benning (b. 1942) has played a central role in the history of American independent cinema by offering his rigorously structured yet wonderfully graceful films as extended meditations on the American landscape and its social and environmental histories. Benning’s life and work have been shaped by his passionate wanderlust—born in Milwaukee, he lived for intervals in Colorado, the Missouri Ozarks, Illinois and Oklahoma before settling in Val Verde, California in 1987, with car and motorcycle journeys around the country generating such films as I-94 (1975) and Four Corners (1997). His career has been equally restless, ranging from his early experimentation with an avant-garde aesthetic to his embrace, during the 1980s and 90s, of explicitly autobiographical elements and increased human content. With his “California Trilogy” (2000-2001) Benning entered a new phase, refining his formalist style and political concerns while distilling his abiding interest in place and exacting organizational structures.
Department: Directing
Place of Birth: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Adult: No
Birthday: December 28, 1942
Age: 82 years old
Gender: Male
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James Benning: Circling the Image
Overview: The American filmmaker James Benning has been one of the outstanding exponents of the structural film since the mid-1970s. Bennings artistic position has been strongly influenced by mathematics and by the creativity of mathematical thinking. With his new project 13 Lakes, James Benning goes one step further towards reducing things to a minimum. The film focuses on thirteen large American lakes (including Salton Sea, Lake Powell, and Lake Michigan) along with their geographical and historical relationship to the landscape. This documentary film was occasioned by 13 Lakes, and was shot in California, Arizona, and Utah. It accompanies the artist for a week as he searches for locations and as he films the first two shots for his own film.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2003-11-30
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Coming to Terms
Overview: 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 make up their mind to support him at the end. A portrait of family disorganization casting the master of experimental film, James Benning.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2013-11-24
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Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater
Overview: In 1985, former oil rig worker Richard Linklater began a film screening society in Austin, Texas, that aimed to show classic art-house and experimental films to a budding community of cinephiles. Eventually incorporating as a nonprofit, the newly branded Austin Film Society raised enough money to fly in their first out-of-town filmmaker: James Benning. Accepting the invitation, Benning met Linklater and the two began to develop a personal and intellectual bond, leading to many future encounters. Starting in the 1960s, Benning had been creating low budget films mostly on his own, while Linklater had just begun to craft his first shorts. The filmmakers have remained close even as their careers have diverged. After the cult success of Slacker, Linklater went on to make films with Hollywood support. Benning, meanwhile, has stayed close to his roots and is mainly an unknown figure in mainstream film culture.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2013-09-03
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The United States of America
Overview: A conceptual bicentennial film dealing with spatial and temporal relationships between two travelers, their car, and the geographic, political, and social changes from NY to Los Angeles.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1975-03-05
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thinking of red
Overview: A film by James Benning
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2016-11-10
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Used Innocence
Overview: Using experimental narrative structure as his vehicle, Benning recreates the sensationalized and controversial circumstances surrounding Lorencia Bembenek, aka "Bambi", former "Playboy bunny" turned cop, turned accused and convicted killer who disappeared after a daring escape from prison. The film shows the evolution of Benning's and Bembenek's relationship presented through their actual letters read in voice over which depict the filmmaker's curiosity with the subject as it evolves from intrigue to a love obsession.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1989-02-22
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The Great Gatsby in Five Minutes
Overview: The Fitzgerald classic as you've never seen it, transposed to a Los Angeles of sleek modern architecture and strip-mall foot clinics.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2011-01-01
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Maintenance
Overview: Maintenance is filmmaker Adele Horne’s exploration and meditation on house cleaning. Cleaning is one of the most private things we do in our homes, other than sex and arguments. We often feel shameful about clutter and dirt, so there is something particularly intimate and meticulous about the act of cleaning it up. Although a clean home is socially valued, the work required to achieve it is not. House cleaning exists on the shadow side of the economy, on the margins or outside of paid employment. It is an additional, uncounted form of labour that enables our roles as paid workers and consumers. This film invites viewers to meditate on the ongoing maintenance work that makes other, more highly valued labour possible.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
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L. Cohen
Overview: A view of an Oregon farm field, observing a solar eclipse and incorporating a Leonard Cohen song.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2018-01-14
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Telemundo
Overview: James Benning watches tv with a young girl.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2018-12-01
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Benning's Dream
Overview: an excerpt of a conversation between James and I during the Fall of 2019 - Santa Clarita, CA
Genres: Documentary Animation
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2021-05-23
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中孚 61. The Inner Truth
Overview: 61. La Verdad Interior reveals the creative process behind TELEMUNDO [screened in the New Visions section], a collaborative film directed by James Benning and starring himself and Sofía Brito. It is a journey, an interview. The connection between a film director with a great carrier and a young actress who decides to film the creative process that thrives between the two. A film-essay in which these two beings find ways of overcoming the language barriers.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: es
Release Date: 2019-10-12
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She Dies Tomorrow
Overview: Amy is ravaged by the notion that she is going to die tomorrow, which sends her down a dizzying emotional spiral. When her skeptical friend Jane discovers Amy’s feeling of imminent death to be contagious, they both begin bizarre journeys through what might be the last day of their lives.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2020-07-31
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On Paradise Road
Overview: Filmed at Benning's home in Val Verde during the first month of the pandemic, the film is a portrait of that time.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2020-10-02
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Four Corners
Overview: James Benning's "Four Corners" uses a specific geographical location to pose larger questions about the United States. Here, the geographic and wholly imaginary place Four Corners, that favorite tourist destination where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet, becomes a kind of theoretical ground zero, the site from which Benning can give voice to other, pointedly unofficial American stories.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1997-01-01
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