James Benning Movies

Shots of 13 great lakes in the USA, with each shot containing half water and half sky or land.

"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...

A narrative film concerning an investigation of two women in time and space, to the point where the investigation becomes the narrative.

Short by James Benning.

Iron ore is super heated in a blast furnace to make pig iron, which in turn is used to produce steel. The making of steel is a continuous process....

Three-channel HD video (color/sound), 18 minutes

James Benning’s PLACE is a multi-part work that deepens the artist’s longstanding engagement with marginalized artists and creators. Over...

"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...

A found footage remake of Michael Snow's Wavelength

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 filmed homage to Sam Shepard, in a single fixed frame where the treetops sway under a moving cloud cover. Orchestrated by the camera in this forest...

A stretch of highway blanketed by snow becomes the stage for one accident after another in US 41, perhaps Benning’s first disaster movie, or a...

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...

James Benning, USA, 1988, 3m.

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

An experimental film portraying different skies in very long takes.

an excerpt of a conversation between James and I during the Fall of 2019 - Santa Clarita, CA

A film by James Benning

For his performance Reforming the Past, James Benning turns towards his own film North on Evers, shot in 1991. After seeing Andy Warhol's Screen...

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