James Benning Movies

Twenty-two minute tracking shot through campgrounds in Southern Wisconsin

A film by James Benning

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

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

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....

A three hour shot containing light, dark, and a BNSF train in the desert.

Stills from a trip in Cuba.

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

"scorched earth is a film that is part of the Untitled Fragments Project. It's 60 minutes at dusk, just one shot of the burned over forest (from this...

"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...

Experimental filmmaker James Benning returns with this abstract documentary about California's Central Valley, part 1 of his "California Trilogy"....

signs is a sobering continuation of Benning’s career-long interest with the written word as image, text as vision: a silent parade of stills...

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

Casting a Glance is a tribute to the American artist Robert Smithson. Between May 15 2005 and January 14 2007, I made 16 trips to the Spiral Jetty....

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...

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

A short film about masculinity

Presented on a computer, "Pascal's Lemma" features mathematics (diagrams, equations, questions), biographical information about Blaise Pascal, and...

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

James Benning returns to the location of his 2012 film Nightfall, this time at daybreak.