James Benning (film director)
James Benning ( born December 28, 1942 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American avant-garde filmmaker and documentarian. He is the son of German immigrants, and studied at the University of Wisconsin and has been working since 1987 at the California Institute of the Arts.
Life
Benning is an independent filmmaker and usually works completely alone. His films usually focus on single minute-long camera settings of American landscapes, buildings or places that do exempted from the change of location without a cut. The settings are often exactly the same length; a voiceover omitted Benning, instead hear the local sound backdrop.
Since the mid- 1990s, his films have focused on the landscapes of the Southwestern United States. Among his best known films heard his 2000/2001 resulting California trilogy consisting of the films El Valley Centro, Sogobi and lot.
In 2009, he turned for the first time outside of North America; the resulting film in the Ruhr Ruhr is also Benning's first digitally twisted film.
At the Berlinale 2013 Benning's film Stemple Pass ( 2012) was listed in the Forum section as a world premiere.
His daughter is the experimental filmmaker and musician Sadie Benning.