Darkest Americana & Elsewhere - Program II
Films, Video & Words of James Benning
- When
- Fri Feb 26, 2010
- Where
- Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) Screening Room
- Time
- 8:15pm
- Cost
- $6 - $10
- Tags
- Movies, Film Screenings
Description
presented in association with the Film Studies Program at the University of San Francisco and the Exploratorium’s Cinema Arts Program[members: $6 / non-members: $10]
Since the early 1970s, James Benning has created a body of formally innovative, long-form film works which use duration, understated camera work and (at times) elliptical narrative to examine cultural assumptions and contradictions with American culture and history, often revealing darkness or ideological conflict lurking beneath the surfaces of everyday appearances. A filmmaker committed to navigating his own deeply ambivalent relationship with American culture and history, Benning’s works explore the intersections of landscape, history and ideology as elegant monuments to contemplation and the passage of time.
A bleak companion to American Dreams (Lost and Found), Landscape Suicide finds parallels of isolation between infamous mass murderer Ed Gein’s life in 1950s Wisconsin and that of teenager Bernadette Protti, convicted of killing a classmate in mid-‘80s Orinda, California, as reconstructed from the substantive details of each “true crime” case. (STEVE POLTA & JONATHAN MARLOW)
James Benning: Landscape Suicide (1986), 95 min.
More Info
- Link
- http://www.sfcinematheque.org/
- Call
- 415.552.1990
- Contact Form (account required)
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