Experimental

Naked Repose: A Conversation with James Benning about “Twenty Cigarettes”

Written by Darren Hughes

Published on 07 October 2011
James Benning

“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.Read More »

It’s a 2012 short-film, text by Theodore J. Kaczynski, made of scans of a document from a FBI Laboratory, about the danger of experiments with accelerated particles:
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Film synopsis:

An experimental film, in which a variety of audiovisual techniques are used to create the sense of polymorphic eroticism as developed by European and Mediterranean cinematography of the 20th century. Combining the methods of “animation” and “live action”, this intricate work embodies the idea of an “ars combinatoria”. The structure is loose, with neither a central axis nor a point where everything converges, contributing greatly to the open-ended character of the film, where rhythm is the key element.Read More »

A children’s art project done at the Norton, Ohio Elementary Schools in 1962. Using scrap wood the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders plan and make wooden sculptures that have a primitive totem-like quality. Professors James M. Someroski, and Marlene Mancini Frost of Kent State University assisted in the making of the film. Professor Fred Coulter composed and played the music.Read More »

from MOMA:
Nagy Shaker was studying stage design in Rome and Paolo Isaja ran a ciné-club that specialized in experimental cinema when they met at the Rome Film School. They decided to collaborate on their respective film projects, and with the help of friends, they launched into production, casting an American nurse of Italian descent who was in Rome at the time. The film, a meditation on freedom at the turn of the 1970s, utilizes the full vocabulary of experimental cinema to evoke youthful experimentation and energetic abandon. The two alternated between directing, filming, and recording sound. Jamil Suleiman authored the musical score and Renzo Rossellini financed the print.Read More »

Very curious old movie. The quality is not that great, of course, but it’s interesting to see things flow and some animation appearing on an 1909 film.Read More »

Another little gem from Emile Cohl. This short animated film seems to be about booze and delusions.
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IMDB:
part of a modern art classic
9/10
Author: Chris_Docker from United Kingdom
20 March 2004

The Cremaster Cycle 9/10 The Cremaster Cycle is a series of five films shot over eight years. Although they can be seen individually, the best experience is seeing them all together (like Wagner’s Ring Cycle) – and also researching as much as you can beforehand. To give you an idea of the magnitude, it has been suggested that their fulfilment confirms creator Matthew Barney as the most important American artist of his generation (New York Times Magazine).

The Cremaster films are works of art in the sense that the critical faculties you use whilst watching them are ones you might more normally use in, say, the Tate Modern, than in an art house cinema. They are entirely made up of symbols, have only the slimmest of linear plots, and experiencing them leaves you with a sense of awe, of more questions and inspirations than closed-book answers. The imagery is at once grotesque, beautiful, challenging, puzzling and stupendous. Any review can only hope to touch on the significance of such an event, but a few clues might be of interest, so for what it’s worth …
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from link –
In NORTH ON EVERS (1991) James Benning takes the road movie seriously, making his circular trip across the U.S. a marvelously photographed, intensely felt, and disturbing portrait of contemporary America. In many ways, this recent film is a departure of Benning’s earlier films which are characterized, at times, by extremely long, carefully planned takes and a minimal narrative approach. In NORTH ON EVERS, the shots are kept short with a narrative that is direct and detailed, like a diary or a long series of postcards to a friend. What this work shares with the other films is a dry wit and a deep interest in the American social landscape.Read More »