James Benning (film director)

James Benning (born 1942 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American filmmaker. He is the son of German immigrants and studied film at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1975) under the tutelage of David Bordwell. Working as an independent filmmaker, Benning's films focus on a sense of place, and are often built from long, unedited takes. He used to work in Chicago but in recent years has been based on the West Coast. In 2003, Reinhard Wulf made a 90 minute documentary about Benning and his films called James Benning: Circling the Image. In 2007, the Austrian Film Museum published a book of texts on his work.

In addition to his film work, Benning has held professorships at Bard College and Northwestern University, and since 1987, he has taught film-making and experimental sound at the California Institute of the Arts.

His daughter is experimental filmmaker and musician Sadie Benning.

Filmography

• Did You Ever Hear That Cricket Sound? (1971)
• Time and a Half (1972)
• Ode to Muzak (1972)
• Art Hist. 101 (1972)
• Michigan Avenue (1973)
• Honeyland Road (1973)
• 57 (1973)
• I-94 (1974)
• Gleem (1974)
• 8½ × 11 (1974)
• United States of America, The (1975)
• Saturday Night (1975)
• An Erotic Film (1975)
• 9-1-75 (1975)
• 3 Minutes on the Dangers of Film Recording (1975)
• Chicago Loop (1976)
• A to B (1976)
• One Way Boogie Woogie (1977)
• 11 × 14 (1977)
• Grand Opera (1978)
• Four Oil Wells (1978)
• Oklahoma (1979)
• Double Yodel (1980)
• Last Dance (1981)
• Him and Me (1982)
• American Dreams (1984)
• O Panama (1985)
• Landscape Suicide (1986)
• Used Innocence (1989)
• North on Evers (1992)
• Deseret (1995)
• Four Corners (1997)
• Utopia (1998)
• El Valley Centro ¹ (2000)
• B-52 (2001) (Sound only)
• Sogobi¹ (2001)
• Los¹ (2001)
• 13 Lakes (2004)
• Ten Skies (2004)
• One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later (2005)
• Casting a Glance (2007)
• RR (2007)
• Ruhr (2009)
• John Krieg Exiting the Falk Corporation in 1971 (2010)
• Twenty Cigarettes (2011)

¹ Part of the so-called California trilogy

External links

• James Benning at the Internet Movie Database
• James Benning faculty profile at CalArts
• Interview with Senses of Cinema
• Interview with journalist Neil Young (2002)
• James Benning's Art of Landscape:Ontological, Pedagogical, Sacrilegious
• "TORTURED LANDSCAPES"
• American Filmmaker - James Benning-Retrospective at the Austrian Film Museum
• Revue Independencia
• 11 × 14 at the Internet Movie Database
• The Films of James Benning by Canyon Cinema
• Darren Hughes, "Naked Repose: A Conversation with James Benning about Twenty Cigarettes," MUBI, October 7, 2011.