In advance of its world premiere at the currently underway 2013 Venice Film Festival, FilmBuff announced that it will digitally release the doc "Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater," which follows the titular filmmakers as they gab about sports, art and friendship over the course of a leisurely weekend in Austin, Texas. Gabe Klinger's film combines these filmed interactions with extensive archival material to explore the filmmakers' connections and differences. Benning is a legendary figure in the experimental underground, best known for "One Way Boogie Woogie" and "American Dreams (Lost and Found)." Linklater most recently helmed the third entry in his "Before" series, "Before Midnight," starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. "Benning and Linklater have been heroes of mine for as long as I’ve been into film," Klinger. "Making a documentary that attempts to present their work and ideas in an entertaining and original way was one of...
- 8/29/2013
- by Nigel M Smith
- Indiewire
The Bradford International Film Festival is typically an underground-friendly fest. This year appears to be no exception with two very special experimental film retrospectives, as well as a few modern underground-type flicks.
The 19th annual Biff will roll on April 11-21 at several locations around Bradford and Leeds in England, including the National Media Museum, Hebden Bridge Picture House, Hyde Park Picture House and other venues.
Biff is hosting a tribute to Stan Brakhage this year by screening the prolific filmmaker’s magnum opus, Dog Star Man, as well as a selection of his short films, from 1963′s legendary Mothlight to 1994′s Black Ice. There’s also going to be an epic-sized tribute/retrospective of experimental films from Austria, a country with a proud avant-garde filmmaking tradition that’s typically overlooked.
From Austria, Biff is, of course, screening two works from one of the experimental film world’s biggest masters,...
The 19th annual Biff will roll on April 11-21 at several locations around Bradford and Leeds in England, including the National Media Museum, Hebden Bridge Picture House, Hyde Park Picture House and other venues.
Biff is hosting a tribute to Stan Brakhage this year by screening the prolific filmmaker’s magnum opus, Dog Star Man, as well as a selection of his short films, from 1963′s legendary Mothlight to 1994′s Black Ice. There’s also going to be an epic-sized tribute/retrospective of experimental films from Austria, a country with a proud avant-garde filmmaking tradition that’s typically overlooked.
From Austria, Biff is, of course, screening two works from one of the experimental film world’s biggest masters,...
- 3/11/2013
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Since last November saw the premiere at the Austrian Film Museum of several new works by James Benning after the Viennale had ended—YouTube Trilogy, small roads, Two Cabins and Faces—the festival seems to be making up to its international guests like myself that had left the city last year disappointed at being unable to catch them. This year new and old works by Benning are being shown during the festival. One day was entirely devoted to what one might call the One Way Boogie Woogie project, showing first the 1977 film by that name shot on 16mm, a cryptic graphic-materialist narrative primarily documenting a particular rundown, industrial neighborhood of Milwaukee, followed by One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later (2005), which revisits the same area again through 16mm, and concluded by a new, longer digital work based on the area and following a related principle, One Way Boogie Woogie 2012. Another visit...
- 11/13/2012
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
"The guard is down and the mask is off, even more than in lone bedrooms where there's a mirror. People's faces are in naked repose down in the subway." —Walker Evans
"So, have you ever smoked?" I laughed when James Benning asked me this question at the end of our conversation. "Honestly, I've probably smoked about twenty cigarettes," I told him. "I'm a child of the 70s and 80s. Nancy Reagan told me to say ‘no.'" That was almost the full extent of our discussion of smoking, despite the fact that Benning's feature-length video, Twenty Cigarettes, is constructed solely of portraits of smokers. The duration of each of the twenty shots is determined by the length of time it takes each subject to light, smoke, and discard a cigarette. Benning composed each shot, staged the person in front of a flat backdrop, and then walked away from the camera.
"So, have you ever smoked?" I laughed when James Benning asked me this question at the end of our conversation. "Honestly, I've probably smoked about twenty cigarettes," I told him. "I'm a child of the 70s and 80s. Nancy Reagan told me to say ‘no.'" That was almost the full extent of our discussion of smoking, despite the fact that Benning's feature-length video, Twenty Cigarettes, is constructed solely of portraits of smokers. The duration of each of the twenty shots is determined by the length of time it takes each subject to light, smoke, and discard a cigarette. Benning composed each shot, staged the person in front of a flat backdrop, and then walked away from the camera.
- 10/7/2011
- MUBI
All images captured from the (compressed) 3sat television broadcast of Ruhr, 3 November 2009.
I
1. The Matenastraße Tunnel. A subterranean passageway of soft and hard whitewashed lines, 0.5km long, cutting under a steel mill in Duisburg. The roof weighs dark and heavy, its stains run down the walls. Plastic detritus crawls along the concrete, four vehicles clatter through, a cyclist disrupts a dry leaf. Sirens sound, a machinic drone reverberating from overhead. “When you walk through, it’s like living in your eardrum” —James Benning. An unbroken shot lasts seven and a half minutes, a composite culled from two continuous hours of footage: cars pass in a sequence of blue, turquoise, red and white, ordered by half a dozen invisible edits. When no pro-filmic movement is visible, the frame is eerily still—no grain dances, no light dashes through a flickering strip at the back of the theatre.
Ruhr is Benning’s...
I
1. The Matenastraße Tunnel. A subterranean passageway of soft and hard whitewashed lines, 0.5km long, cutting under a steel mill in Duisburg. The roof weighs dark and heavy, its stains run down the walls. Plastic detritus crawls along the concrete, four vehicles clatter through, a cyclist disrupts a dry leaf. Sirens sound, a machinic drone reverberating from overhead. “When you walk through, it’s like living in your eardrum” —James Benning. An unbroken shot lasts seven and a half minutes, a composite culled from two continuous hours of footage: cars pass in a sequence of blue, turquoise, red and white, ordered by half a dozen invisible edits. When no pro-filmic movement is visible, the frame is eerily still—no grain dances, no light dashes through a flickering strip at the back of the theatre.
Ruhr is Benning’s...
- 1/25/2010
- MUBI
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