James Benning Movies

Looping, chugging and barreling by, the trains in Benning's latest monumental film map a stunning topography and a history of American development....

A film looking at the past to warn about the future, from a little boy's point of view. A companion to ‘American Dreams (lost and found)’...

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

Towards the end of 2015, James Benning made one of his occasional expeditions to Utah, to the place where Robert Smithson's colossal land-sculpture...

Intercourse between two people who never appear on the screen at the same time. An exploration of sex and male/female identities.

A crisscross through the USA, carving it up into a series of static shots of just under two minutes, one for each state, presented alphabetically,...

One day, father makes a shocking decision in a family gathering. The family disagrees with it and against him in the very beginning. However, they...

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...

Lengthy static shots of various backroads, smaller interstates, quieter roads, and lonely highways.

Benning's 18-minute study of moonfall in the morning sky-- A close cousin to his film "two moons". A lovely rendition of 'Moon River' accompanies the...

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

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

James Benning appropriates a 14-second excerpt from his own film Time and a Half (second entry in his filmography), dissects the scene into its...

In summer 2011, James Benning returned to his hometown of Milwaukee to make a third version of his seminal 1977 film 'One Way Boogie Woogie'. In 1977...

The Surrealist, "Exquisite Corpse" was a French Café parlor game. "Exquisite Moving Corpse" is more of an artist chain letter. 60 artists...

glory is a film about the present, about America and its history of abuse.

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

Ten shots of skies.

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

This is multifaceted look at the landscape and history of Utah (or Deseret, as the Mormon Church prefers to call it). Benning condenses 93 news...