James Benning
Directing
Born December 28, 1942 in 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.
Filmography
Eight Bridges
Adulthood
Little Boy
Breathless
Allensworth
TEN YEARS LATER
Exquisite Moving Corpse
The United States of America
Benning's Dream
Self (voice)
In Process...
From Bakersfield to Mojave
On Paradise Road
PLACE
She Dies Tomorrow
Leatherman
Maggie's Farm
中孚 61. The Inner Truth
daylight
Two Moons
The Wrecker Kings
Telemundo
Himself
after Traylor. Thoreau cabin (2008-2018)
glory
L. Cohen
Himself
Readers
Fall Equinox
Spring Equinox
Measuring Change
Santa Teresa & Other Stories
Perimeter
52 Films
Natural History
signs
Coming to Terms
The Father
Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater
Self
BNSF
The War
One Way Boogie Woogie
Easy Rider
Stemple Pass
Ted Kaczynski (voice)
Postscript
Nightfall
20 Little Films
Maintenance
Himself
All That She Surveys
After Warhol
Faces
Small Roads
Two Cabins
YouTube Trilogy: 4 Songs, History, Asian Girls
Twenty Cigarettes
The Great Gatsby in Five Minutes
Owl Eyes
Tulare Road
Pig Iron
Among Enemies: Jeonju Digital Project 2010
John Krieg Exiting the Falk Corporation in 1971
Ruhr
Fire & Rain
RR
Casting a Glance
Water Spell
One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later
74.78
Ten Skies
13 Lakes
James Benning: Circling the Image
Himself
Sogobi
Los
El Valley Centro
Utopia
Four Corners
Narrator
Panama: Exploring the Panama Canal
Deseret
North on Evers
Forevermore: Biography of a Leach Lord
Used Innocence
(voice)
TABLE TOP
Landscape Suicide
O Panama
American Dreams (Lost and Found)
Him and Me
Grand Opera: An Historical Romance
11 x 14
One Way Boogie Woogie
Chicago Loop
9-1-75
The United States of America
Michigan Avenue
8½ x 11
I-94
Time and a Half