James Benning, who has been breaking the habits of even the more indiscriminate fans of non-narrative film since the 1970s, dispensed with a classic story in this, his newly-restored first feature. Emanating a childlike joy from the surprising possibilities of a pure cinematic language, the work toys with the relationship between the characters, props, movements, and spaces of semantically unconnected scenes.
Since the 1970s James Benning has been tirelessly breaking the habits of even the more indiscriminate fans of non-narrative film. He dispensed with a classic story in his feature debut, which was thoroughly restored last year, four decades after it was made. How does an enigmatic encounter between a man and a woman at a train station relate to a long shot taken through the windshield of a train slowly passing through the suburbs of a big American city? And do the strange golfers in the final scene have something in common? Without providing definitive answers, 11 × 14 correlates characters, props, gestures, movements, and spaces from semantically unconnected scenes in order to evoke an almost childlike joy from the surprising possibilities of a pure cinematic language.
Martin Horyna
82 min / Color, DCP
Director James Benning
/ Producer James Benning
/ Cast Serafina Bathrick, Paddy Whannel, Harvey Taylor, Barbara Frankel, Bette Gordon
/ Contact James Benning
James Benning (b. 1942, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA). Selected filmography: Time & A Half (1972, short), 8½ × 11 (1974, short), 11 × 14 (1977), One Way Boogie Woogie (1977), Grand Opera. An Historical Romance (1979), Landscape Suicide (1986), Four Corners (1997), 13 Lakes (2004), One Way Boogie Woogie (2005), Twenty Cigarettes (2011), Stemple Pass (2012), natural history (2014), Scorched Earth (2016)
James Benning
Fax: +1 661 253 7824
E-mail: [email protected]
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