James Benning Movies

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

Grand Opera marks a stock-taking of Benning's work and his life, presenting a personal and artistic autobiography woven together with a series of...

Stills from a trip in Cuba.

signs is a sobering continuation of Benning’s career-long interest with the written word as image, text as vision: a silent parade of stills...

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

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

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

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

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

An experimental film portraying different skies in very long takes.

James Benning’s PLACE is a multi-part work that deepens the artist’s longstanding engagement with marginalized artists and creators. Over...

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

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

A new video work by American avant-garde filmmaker James Benning explores the videos of Russian activist/activist-art group Voina (“war”).

Towards the end of 2015, James Benning made one of his occasional expeditions to Utah, to the place where Robert Smithson's colossal land-sculpture...

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

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...

Video essay providing a brief introduction to the work of James Benning for his exhibition at neugerriemschneider.

In summer 2011, James Benning returned to his hometown of Milwaukee to make a third version of his seminal 1977 film 'One Way Boogie Woogie'. In 1977...

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