James Benning

It centers on Allensworth, the first self-administered African-American municipality in California, showcasing the buildings of the now-abandoned town and looking for the traces of a Black cultural history.

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)’ (1984)

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, from Heron Bay, Alabama to Kelly, Wyoming.

This three-channel video installation by James Benning shows three scenes from David Wark Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The two-minute-long screen arrangement of imperceptibly moving images alludes to the beginning of racism. The three screens each show a solider in the American Civil War, black slaves picking cotton in the field, and imposing KKK.

Shots of 8 bridges from the continental United States - the Golden Gate Bridge from Sausalito, California; the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge from Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico; the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma, Alabama; the Seven Mile Bridge from Little Duck Key, Florida; the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee, New Jersey; the Dubuque-Wisconsin Bridge from Dubuque, Iowa; the High Bridge from Valley City, North Dakota; the Astoria-Megler Bridge from Astoria, Oregon.

The portrait of an art institution: James Benning explores the building and grounds of the California Institute of Art. Each image creates a tension, a constant urge to move on the next one, as if landscape and space could be the scenes of a crime.

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

"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 minutes, the exact length of Godard's Breathless. My film would be non-narrative, but stuff happened" - J.B

James Benning's forthcoming film features 2 skies, one shot from Spiral Jetty in Corinne, Utah and the other from the Sun Tunnels in Wendover, Utah.