James Benning

Known for DirectingBorn 1942-12-28 (age 83)Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Over the past thirty-five years James Benning (b. 1942) has played a central role in the history of American independent cinema by offering his rigorously structured yet wonderfully graceful films as extended meditations on the American landscape and its social and environmental histories. Benning’s life and work have been shaped by his passionate wanderlust—born in Milwaukee, he lived for intervals in Colorado, the Missouri Ozarks, Illinois and Oklahoma before settling in Val Verde, California in 1987, with car and motorcycle journeys around the country generating such films as I-94 (1975) and Four Corners (1997). His career has been equally restless, ranging from his early experimentation with an avant-garde aesthetic to his embrace, during the 1980s and 90s, of explicitly autobiographical elements and increased human content. With his “California Trilogy” (2000-2001) Benning entered a new phase, refining his formalist style and political concerns while distilling his abiding interest in place and exacting organizational structures.Read more

Movies & web series

Fire & Rain

3 Minutes on the Dangers of Film Recording

8½ x 11

Did You Ever Hear That Cricket Sound?

James Benning: Circling the Image

Allensworth

glory

Him and Me

Chicago Loop

9-1-75

Stemple Pass

One Way Boogie Woogie

The United States of America

Lunch Break

Casting a Glance

North on Evers

El Valley Centro

Coming to Terms

Pig Iron

Ten Skies

Grand Opera: An Historical Romance

American Dreams (Lost and Found)

Landscape Suicide

11 x 14

Two Cabins

RR

Utopia

Easy Rider

Small Roads

Sogobi

O Panama

13 Lakes

Los

Ruhr

One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later

Water Spell

Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater

Nightfall

Little Boy

Four Corners

Spring Equinox

Fall Equinox

Used Innocence

Measuring Change

One Way Boogie Woogie

YouTube Trilogy: 4 Songs, History, Asian Girls

The United States of America

BNSF