James Benning (born 1942) is an American independent filmmaker and educator. Over the course of his 40-year career Benning has made over twenty-five feature-length films that have shown in many different venues across the world. Since 1987, he has taught at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). He is known as a minimalist filmmaker.
Early life and education James Benning was born in 1942 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Benning played baseball for the first twenty years of his life. He earned an undergraduate and master's degree in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, which he attended on a baseball scholarship. Benning experienced a political awakening and racial consciousness during the late 1960s, participating in civil rights protests led by Father James Groppi in segregated Milwaukee.
Benning dropped out of graduate school to forfeit his military deferment since his friends, who were mostly not in school, were being drafted and dying in Vietnam. Benning instead joined the War on Poverty, teaching children of migrant workers in Colorado how to read and write, and helping to start a commodities food program that fed people living in poverty in the Missouri Ozarks. Benning often uses this background as part of his film work.
At the age of 33, Benning received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he had studied with David Bordwell.
For the next four years he taught filmmaking at Northwestern University and CalArts (1988—present).
Film Benning was hailed cinema's voice of the Midwest with his 1976/1978 films, 11 x 14 and One Way Boogie Woogie, made in Chicago and Milwaukee and the surrounding rural region. In 1980, Benning moved to lower Manhattan, where, with the aid of grants and funding from German Television, he continued to make films, most notably, American Dreams (1984) and Landscape Suicide (1986). Leaving New York after eight years, Benning moved west to teach film/video at California Institute of the Arts, and has taught there ever since. In the early 1990s Benning made a series of text/image films: North on Evers (1991), Deseret (1995), Four Corners (1997), and UTOPIA (1998), often invoking histories of how antagonistic cultural and economic agendas over land use shape landscapes and configure social environments.
Benning has employed diverse methods, themes, structures, and aesthetics, investigating narrative and anti-narrative modes, personal history, race, collective memory, place, industry, and landscape. His philosophy of "landscape as a function of time," and "Looking and Listening" (which is also the name of a course taught by Benning) is particularly evident in his films since 1999 in the form of fixed, stable shots. For instance, each of El Valley Centro, Los, and Sogobi—The California Trilogy (2000–2001) is composed of 35 2½ minute shots. Nightfall (2012) consists of a single 98-minute shot made at a high elevation in the woods in the west Sierras that begins in late afternoon as the sun is going down and ends in near blackness.
Benning's use of duration reflects his accord with Henry David Thoreau's passage from Walden, "No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking at what is to be seen?"
Benning divides his time between Val Verde, California, and a small town in the Sierra Nevada north of Bakersfield. There, in 2007, Benning built a replica of the cabin Thoreau constructed in 1845 on Walden Pond. The following year Benning erected a copy of the cabin Ted Kaczynski built in 1971 in Montana. Inside the cabins Benning has installed a number of copies he made of paintings by artists that have deeply inspired him, including Bill Traylor, Henry Darger, and Mose Tolliver. These locations are near to California Institute of the Arts where he is teaching in the film department.
Publication Benning published a book of poems titled Thirty Years to Life in 1973, and Fifty Years to Life, Texts from Eight Films by James Benning in 2000, both with Two Pants Press in Madison, Wisconsin. Reinhard Wulf's feature-length documentary, James Benning: Circling the Image, was released in 2003. In 2007, the Austrian Film Museum also published the first substantial monograph on the filmmaker, James Benning, edited by Barbara Pichler and Claudia Slanar. In 2011, Julie Ault (ed.) collaborated with Benning on the book (FC) Two Cabins by JB, published with A.R.T. Press. Scores of reviews, articles, and essays on Benning's work, as well as interviews with the filmmaker have appeared in publications worldwide.
Medium Benning worked exclusively in 16mm until the increasing obsolescence of the medium necessitated he convert to digital. His first digital film was Ruhr (2009), commissioned by Werner Ruzicka for the Duisburger Filmwoche. Digital filmmaking allowed him to branch out in different directions including re-makes of Faces (2011) and Easy Rider (2012), as well as the two-hour one shot film Nightfall (2011). Benning's work has always traversed the film sphere and the art field, finding constituencies in both. He made 16mm installations at Art Park (1977), the Walker Art Center (1978), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (1980), and has recently created digital installations at Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles, (2011), 21er Haus, Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna (2012), and Argos, Centrum Voor Kunst en Media, Brussels (2012).
Distribution Benning is represented by neugerriemschneider, Berlin. He continues to distribute his own films, as he has for his entire career. Benning has been supported by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Film Institute, New York State Council on the Arts, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the University Film Association. From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s Werner Deutsch and Cologne-based WDR-TV supported Benning's work with commissions and the purchase of broadcast rights. The Austrian Film Museum in Vienna is restoring and archiving all of Benning's 16mm films as well as, over time, producing DVDs of the works. The Academy Film Archive, in conjunction with the Austrian Film Museum, preserved Benning's film Chicago Loop in 2013.
Filmography DateNameMediumDurationNotes1971Did You Ever Hear That Cricket Sound?16mm, black and white 1 minute1972Time and a Half17 minutesOde to Muzak 16mm, color3 minutesArt Hist. 10116mm, black and white17 minutes1973Michigan Avenue16mm, color6 minutesco-created with Bette Gordon.Honeylane Road 571974I-94 16mm, color3 minutesco-created with Bette Gordon.Gleem 8½ × 1116mm, color32 minutes1975The United States of America 27 minutesco-created with Bette Gordon.Saturday Night3 minutesAn Erotic Film9-1-75 16mm, color22 minutes3 Minutes on the Dangers of Film Recording16mm, black and white with tint3 minutes1976Chicago Loop16mm, color8 minutesA to B 2 minutes1977One Way Boogie Woogie 60 minutes11 × 14 80 minutes65-shot narrative featuring a man's affair, a young hitchhiker and a lesbian couple traveling the Midwestern United States.11 x 14 (1977) - Letterboxd1978Grand Opera 81 minutesFour Oil Wells 16mm, color, installationcontinuoushas been lost.1979Oklahoma continuouswas on a 4 screen installation, has been lost.1980Double Yodel continuoushas been lost.1981Last Dancecontinuoushas been lost.1982Him and Me 16mm, color88 minutes1984American Dreams: Lost and Found55 minutesBenning's Hank Aaron memorabilia with excerpts from Arthur Bremer's diaryAmerican Dreams (1984)|MUBIAmerican Dreams (lost and found)/Landscape Suicide - Gartenberg Media Enterprises1985O Panama 28 minutesco-created with Burt Barr.1986Landscape Suicide95 minutes1989Used Innocence 95 minutes1991North on Evers87 minutes1995Deseret82 minutes1997Four Corners80 minutes1998Utopia 93 minutes2000El Valley Centro (California Trilogy part 1)90 minutes2001Los (California Trilogy part 2) 90 minutesSogobi (California Trilogy part 3) 90 minutesB-52 (sound only)200413 Lakes 16mm, color133 minutesadded to National Film Registry in 2014.2004Ten Skies 101 minutes2005One Way Boogie Woogie / 27 Years Later121 minutes2007Casting a Glance 80 minutesRR110 minutes2009Ruhr digital, color122 minutes2010John Krieg Exiting the Falk Corporation in 1971digital, black and white, installation71 minutes2 screen installation, with 2 objects.Pig Irondigital, color, installation31 minutes2 screen installation.Facesdigital, black and white, silent130 minutes2011Twenty Cigarettesdigital, color, single channel installation98 minutesNightfall digital, color98 minutesTwo Cabins digital, color, installation31 minutes2 screen installation.small roads digital, color104 minutes2012Easy Rider96 minutesThe War 56 minutesStemple Pass 123 minutes2013BNSF 193 minutesNatural History 77 minutes2014Farockidigital, color, silent77 minutes2016Spring Equinox digital, colorMeasuring Change2017L. Cohen45 minutesA film centered around time and change on an Oregon farm field, featuring a Leonard Cohen song.2020Maggie's Farm84 minutesShot at California Institute of the Arts2022The United States of America97 minutesWorld Premiere at 72nd Berlin International Film Festival2022Allensworth65 minutes2024Breathless87 minutesWorld Premiere at Cinema du Réel 2025little boy World Premiere at 75th Berlin International Film Festival2026Eight BridgesWorld Premiere at 76th Berlin International Film Festival
Personal life Benning's only child is the artist Sadie Benning, born in 1973.
See also Slow cinema Slow movement Art film
References
Further publications Barbara Pichler, Claudia Slanar (Ed.): James Benning. FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen Vol. 6, Vienna 2007, . James Benning, American Dreams / Landscape Suicide, Edition Filmmuseum, 2-disc set, 2011 Österreichisches Filmmuseum James Benning, casting a glance / RR, Edition Filmmuseum, 2-disc set, 2012, Österreichisches Filmmuseum James Benning, California Trilogy, Edition Filmmuseum, 2-disc set, 2012, Österreichisches Filmmuseum James Benning, Deseret / Four Corners, Edition Filmmuseum, 2-disc set, 2013, Österreichisches Filmmuseum James Benning, natural history / Ruhr, Edition Filmmuseum, 2-disc set, 2014, Österreichisches Filmmuseum James Benning, 11x14 / One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later, Edition Filmmuseum, 2-disc set, 2018, Österreichisches Filmmuseum James Benning, Grand Opera. An Historical Romance / O Panama, Edition Filmmuseum, 2021, Österreichisches Filmmuseum