James Benning Movies

"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...

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

A found footage remake of Michael Snow's Wavelength

A film by James Benning

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

Presented on a computer, "Pascal's Lemma" features mathematics (diagrams, equations, questions), biographical information about Blaise Pascal, and...

A filmed homage to Sam Shepard, in a single fixed frame where the treetops sway under a moving cloud cover. Orchestrated by the camera in this forest...

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...

Twenty-two minute tracking shot through campgrounds in Southern Wisconsin

A crisscross through the USA, carving it up into a series of static shots of just under two minutes, one for each state, presented alphabetically,...

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

Celebrated for his minimal, monumental landscape studies, James Benning turns to the intimacy of the portrait in his latest film, TWENTY CIGARETTES....

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

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

Scrolling excerpts from the diary of George Wallace's would-be assassin Arthur Bremer at screen bottom, Hank Aaron cards and ephemera from his entire...

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

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...

A conceptual bicentennial film dealing with spatial and temporal relationships between two travelers, their car, and the geographic, political, and...

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