James Benning Movies

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

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

A found footage remake of Michael Snow's Wavelength

"On November 28, 2023 I woke up early and drove down to the Upper Kern River. I came to film a tree. It's leaves were orange. The shot would be 87...

"Benning's landscape works, with their meticulous, reverential compositions, have been located in the history of American realist painting and...

Data Entry (2014) extends Benning’s interest in the complex cipher systems Kaczynski developed to encrypt his journals. The video focuses on...

Filmed in Sierra Nevada, just like Benning's Spring Equinox, but this time during a different season. Consists of static shots of the actual...

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

Stills from a trip in Cuba.

The portrait of an art institution: James Benning explores the building and grounds of the California Institute of Art. Each image creates a tension,...

In three virtuosic sequences created entirely in-camera, Benning alternates contrary camera movements in a trio of Chicago locations with increasing...

Text by Theodore J. Kaczynski, made of scans of a document from an FBI Laboratory, about the danger of experiments with accelerated particles.

Except for some additional ambience, the entire sound track of this film has been taken (without permission) from: Ernesto Che Guevara, the Bolivian...

It centers on Allensworth, the first self-administered African-American municipality in California, showcasing the buildings of the now-abandoned...

James Benning's "Four Corners" uses a specific geographical location to pose larger questions about the United States. Here, the geographic and...

The 3-channel video installation brings together four histories: the 1860s scorched earth policy of Kit Carson used to drive out the Navajos from...

Short by James Benning.

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...

In James Benning’s film Concord Woods (2014), we watch a replica of Henry David Thoreau’s famous cabin at Walden Pond. The cabin is first...

This three-channel video installation by James Benning shows three scenes from David Wark Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The...