James Benning Movies

Twenty-four hours in the life of a factory worker.

'After doing a re-make of John Cassevetes’ "Faces" [1968], I decided to re-make another American classic, Dennis Hopper’s "Easy Rider"...

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

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

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

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...

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....

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

Sixty one-minute shots with no camera movement. This tension between painterly and cinematic space is not only experienced as an intellectual...

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

Filmed on November 21 and 22, 2018 in Valencia, California. A gibbous and full moon rising.

Six soldiers wandering in search of enemies in the forest where they can't see an inch ahead. While gathering on the island to prepare Shakespeare's...

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...

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

One man's journey through the American landscape as he has experienced it since the 1950s.

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...

Benning shot Tulare Road on a highway in California’s Central Valley, an area that the director had previously explored in his film El Valley...

At Northwestern University, where he teaches at the time, Benning gives a short interview to some student filmmakers. He then uses this material to...

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

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)’...