James Benning

Birthday: 1942-12-28
Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Gender: Male
Owned By: Unowned

Over the past thirty-five years James Benning (b. 1942) has played a central role in the history of American independent cinema by offering his rigorously structured yet wonderfully graceful films as extended meditations on the American landscape and its social and environmental histories. Benning’s life and work have been shaped by his passionate wanderlust—born in Milwaukee, he lived for intervals in Colorado, the Missouri Ozarks, Illinois and Oklahoma before settling in Val Verde, California in 1987, with car and motorcycle journeys around the country generating such films as I-94 (1975) and Four Corners (1997). His career has been equally restless, ranging from his early experimentation with an avant-garde aesthetic to his embrace, during the 1980s and 90s, of explicitly autobiographical elements and increased human content. With his “California Trilogy” (2000-2001) Benning entered a new phase, refining his formalist style and political concerns while distilling his abiding interest in place and exacting organizational structures.

Credits

Year Title Character
California Trilogy
2020-10-02 On Paradise Road
2020-07-31 She Dies Tomorrow Leatherman
2019-10-12 中孚 61. The Inner Truth
2016-11-10 thinking of red
2013-11-24 Coming to Terms The Father
2011-01-01 The Great Gatsby in Five Minutes Owl Eyes
1989-02-22 Used Innocence (voice)
1975-03-05 The United States of America