James Benning Movies

Filmed in Sierra Nevada, just like Benning's Spring Equinox, but this time during a different season. Consists of static shots of the actual...

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

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

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...

Casting a Glance is a tribute to the American artist Robert Smithson. Between May 15 2005 and January 14 2007, I made 16 trips to the Spiral Jetty....

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

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...

Six soldiers wandering in search of enemies in the forest where they can't see an inch ahead. While gathering on the island to prepare Shakespeare's...

In the fictional city of Santa Teresa, located on the border between Mexico and USA, the researcher Juan de Dios Martínez straddles the line...

Lunch Break features 42 workers as they take their midday break in a corridor stretching nearly the entire shipyard.

James Benning's "Four Corners" uses a specific geographical location to pose larger questions about the United States. Here, the geographic and...

A stretch of highway blanketed by snow becomes the stage for one accident after another in US 41, perhaps Benning’s first disaster movie, or a...

A three hour shot containing light, dark, and a BNSF train in the desert.

Looping, chugging and barreling by, the trains in Benning's latest monumental film map a stunning topography and a history of American development....

Between July, 2007 and June, 2008, veteran independent film-maker,James Benning built replicas of two iconic American Cabins in a remote part of the...

For his performance Reforming the Past, James Benning turns towards his own film North on Evers, shot in 1991. After seeing Andy Warhol's Screen...

"On November 28, 2023 I woke up early and drove down to the Upper Kern River. I came to film a tree. It's leaves were orange. The shot would be 87...

James Benning watches tv with a young girl.

A found footage remake of Michael Snow's Wavelength

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)’...