James Benning Movies

Twenty-two minute tracking shot through campgrounds in Southern Wisconsin

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

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

Filmed at Benning's home in Val Verde during the first month of the pandemic, the film is a portrait of that time.

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...

Last week I made a film of 49 of my T-shirts called Fresh Air. It was to be purely structural. For sound I recorded (in sync) the quiet ambience of...

'After doing a re-make of John Cassevetes’ "Faces" [1968], I decided to re-make another American classic, Dennis Hopper’s "Easy Rider"...

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

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...

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

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....

After having shared a common experience in Cuba, twelve filmmakers say goodbye to return to their countries and make a pact: to make a collective...

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

A found footage remake of Michael Snow's Wavelength

Twenty-four hours in the life of a factory worker.

[...] And then there’s the largest and fastest growing archive of all time, the Internet, and in particular YouTube. I started here playfully...

Iron ore is super heated in a blast furnace to make pig iron, which in turn is used to produce steel. The making of steel is a continuous process....

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

Director James Benning turned his attention to the digital world in YouTube Trilogy, organizing found material around three thematic clusters.