James Benning
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.
97 directing credits · 17 acting credits
Directing · 97
Landscape Suicide
1987
Used Innocence
1989
O Panama
1985
20 Little Films
2012
The United States of America
1975
Twenty Cigarettes
2011
Deseret
1996
El Valley Centro
2000
Faces
2011
RR
2007
Ten Skies
2004
North on Evers
1992
The United States of America
2022
Casting a Glance
2007
Eight Bridges
2026
Among Enemies: Jeonju Digital Project 2010
2010
PLACE
2020
Los
2001
8½ x 11
1974
On Paradise Road
2020
Stemple Pass
2012
American Dreams (Lost and Found)
1984
Measuring Change
2016
YouTube Trilogy: 4 Songs, History, Asian Girls
2011
Reforming the Past
2010
Two Cabins
2011
Fall Equinox
2016
Little Boy
2025
Perimeter
2015
One Way Boogie Woogie
1977
Sogobi
2002
The War
2012
Natural History
2014
Ruhr
2009
Him and Me
1982
SAM
2018
I-94
1974
From Bakersfield to Mojave
2021
Four Corners
1997
Panama: Exploring the Panama Canal
1995
Faces 1973
2010
Utopia
1998
11 x 14
1977
Dancing in the Street, 11 grados de separación
2020
Allensworth
2022
Telemundo
2018
Easy Rider
2012
Exquisite Moving Corpse
2022
Ash 01
2016
Concord Woods
2014
Untitled Fragments
2017
signs
2014
Maggie's Farm
2020
Pascal's Lemma
1984
Michigan Avenue
1974
Spring Equinox
2016
L. Cohen
2018
After Warhol
2011
US 41
2014
Grand Opera: An Historical Romance
1979
One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later
2005
Birth of a Nation
2018
Readers
2017
Pig Iron
2010
HF
2014
Did You Ever Hear That Cricket Sound?
1971
Breathless
2024
BNSF
2013
glory
2018
FUCK ME (orange)
2014
Fire & Rain
2009
74.78
2005
Two Skies
—
scorched earth
2016
Fresh Air
2016
Postscript
2012
52 Films
2015
John Krieg Exiting the Falk Corporation in 1971
2010
Tulare Road
2010
Nightfall
2012
In Process...
2021
3 Minutes on the Dangers of Film Recording
1975
wavelength
2016
9-1-75
1975
daylight
2019
13 Lakes
2004
Small Roads
2011
Cuba, an Historical Romance
2024
TEN YEARS LATER
2022
One Way Boogie Woogie
2012
thinking of red
2016
FUCK ME (green)
2014
Time and a Half
1972
Chicago Loop
1976
Two Moons
2019
TABLE TOP
1988
after Traylor. Thoreau cabin (2008-2018)
2018
Acting · 17
She Dies Tomorrow
2020
The Great Gatsby in Five Minutes
2011
Used Innocence
1989
Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater
2013
The United States of America
1975
On Paradise Road
2020
Stemple Pass
2012
Maintenance
2012
Coming to Terms
2013
Four Corners
1997
Telemundo
2018
James Benning: Circling the Image
2003
L. Cohen
2018
Forevermore: Biography of a Leach Lord
1989
中孚 61. The Inner Truth
2019
thinking of red
2016
Benning's Dream
2021