James Benning Movies

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...

"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...

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...

Stills from a trip in Cuba.

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...

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

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

"Ash 01 is a declassified recording made from a B-52 bomber on December 26, 1972 during the Christmas carpet bombing of Hanoi." - James Benning. This...

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

A film by James Benning

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...

In 54 static shots, Benning provides a picture of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. With the exception of the first three shots, he chooses areas...

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

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

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...

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

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

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

Filmed in Sierra Nevada, California over one day. Static and still shots of the actual landscape and environments in the area.

A document of one of the most famous 66 miles of railroad track in the world including the Tehachapi Loop.