James Benning

Biography

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.

Directed

1. RR (2007) — Director
2. Landscape Suicide (1987) — Director
3. Deseret (1995) — Director
4. Ten Skies (2004) — Director
5. 13 Lakes (2004) — Director
6. Small Roads (2011) — Director
7. One Way Boogie Woogie (1977) — Director
8. Ruhr (2009) — Director
9. American Dreams (Lost and Found) (1984) — Director
10. El Valley Centro (2000) — Director
11. One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later (2005) — Director
12. BNSF (2013) — Director
13. The United States of America (1975) — Director
14. North on Evers (1992) — Director
15. Nightfall (2012) — Director
16. Los (2001) — Director
17. Twenty Cigarettes (2011) — Director
18. Casting a Glance (2007) — Director
19. 11 x 14 (1977) — Director
20. I-94 (1974) — Director
21. Sogobi (2002) — Director
22. Grand Opera: An Historical Romance (1979) — Director
23. Stemple Pass (2012) — Director
24. Easy Rider (2012) — Director
25. One Way Boogie Woogie (2012) — Director
26. L. Cohen (2018) — Director
27. Four Corners (1997) — Director
28. Used Innocence (1989) — Director
29. Pig Iron (2010) — Director
30. Natural History (2014) — Director
31. Michigan Avenue (1974) — Director
32. Two Cabins (2011) — Director
33. The War (2012) — Director
34. YouTube Trilogy: 4 Songs, History, Asian Girls (2011) — Director
35. After Warhol (2011) — Director
36. Measuring Change (2016) — Director
37. HF (2014) — Director
38. The United States of America (2022) — Director
39. Readers (2017) — Director
40. O Panama (1985) — Director

Also appeared in

1. She Dies Tomorrow (2020) — Leatherman
2. The United States of America (1975)
3. Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater (2013) — Self
4. L. Cohen (2018) — Himself
5. Stemple Pass (2012) — Ted Kaczynski (voice)
6. Used Innocence (1989) — (voice)
7. Four Corners (1997) — Narrator
8. Coming to Terms (2013) — The Father
9. Forevermore: Biography of a Leach Lord (1989)
10. Telemundo (2018) — Himself
11. James Benning: Circling the Image (2003) — Himself
12. Maintenance (2012) — Himself
13. thinking of red (2016)
14. The Great Gatsby in Five Minutes (2011) — Owl Eyes
15. Benning's Dream (2021) — Self (voice)
16. 中孚 61. The Inner Truth (2019)
17. On Paradise Road (2020)