James Benning Movies

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...

Four landscape shots containing a replica of Ted Kaczynski’s cabin, one shot per season. On the soundtrack, Benning reads extracts from...

Ten shots of skies.

A view of an Oregon farm field, observing a solar eclipse and incorporating a Leonard Cohen song.

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

Using experimental narrative structure as his vehicle, Benning recreates the sensationalized and controversial circumstances surrounding Lorencia...

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...

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

O Panama features a man confined to his apartment on a winter day as he suffers through an illness. Built on the polarity between hot and cold, the...

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...

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,...

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

One half filmed in 1977, one half filmed 27 years later.

"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...

"Ash 01 is a declassified recording made from a B-52 bomber on December 26, 1972 during the Christmas carpet bombing of Hanoi." - James Benning. This...

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

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

In this short black and white study Benning uses dissolves, shifting camera angles and cross-fades to experiment with narrative structure.