Two nights with filmmaker James Benning
The Block Museum is proud to partner with the MFA in Documentary Media, the Department of Radio, Television, and Film, and the School of Communications at Northwestern to welcome James Benning as a 2025 Hoffman Visiting Artist for Documentary Media.
A widely celebrated filmmaker of the American avant-garde, James Benning comes to Northwestern University for a set of screenings that celebrate early and recent touchpoints in a long and productive career in cinema. On Thursday, April 24th, the Block Museum shows Benning's first feature-length film, made while he was teaching at Northwestern University, 11x14 (1977) – presented in a rare 35mm print of the 2017 restoration by the Austrian Film Museum and the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art. The following day, Friday, April 25th, Benning revisits the themes of his early work with the recent film, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (2022), a landscape portrait purporting to represent each of the country’s 52 states (plus Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic), from A to W, by way of one static 2-minute shot, captured in the course of the director’s many travels.
Following each screening, Benning will be in conversation with Northwestern University faculty in RTVF, the MFA in Documentary Media, and the audience.
Image: James Benning
