James Benning: natural history
natural history
Sunday May 31, 2015, 7:30 pm
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
James Benning: natural history
At the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90028
NOTE: JAMES BENNING WILL NOT BE PRESENT, AS PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED, DUE TO A CHANGE IN HIS SCHEDULE.
In 1998-99, Filmforum hosted a retrospective of works by James Benning. Since then he has completed at least another 20 films, and since migrating from film to digital media, he’s been playing with the space-time continuum in new ways and completing work at a remarkable pace. We’re delighted to host Benning again for the premiere here of one of his latest works, an exploration of the Vienna Museum of Natural History in 54 shots over 77 minutes, mostly of behind-the-scenes spaces.
James Benning has been making work since 1970. He has had recent museum shows in Hamburg, Germany and Graz, Austria.
Tickets: $10 general, $6 students/seniors; free for Filmforum members. Available by credit card in advance from Brown Paper Tickets at http://bpt.me/1470522 or at the door.
natural history, by James Benning
natural history
(2014, HD digital, 77 min.)
“natural history began about five years ago when the director of the Museum of Natural History Vienna, Christian Koeberl, invited me to lunch. He wanted to talk about his second passion film. Myself not liking film that much immediately changed the subject to meteorites, his first passion. Over a schnitzel and the better part of a rather good bottle of red wine I received about two years of university credit on the subject. Then with a boyhood grin, Christian asked if I’d like to see the storage rooms. (...) We spent another few hours looking at the stuff stored and at the underground architecture itself. I told Christian I think I’d like to make a film there, a landscape film, and without hesitation he said yes.” (James Benning) http://www.viennale.at/en/films/natural-history
“I had complete access to the building for 13 straight days,” Benning says. “The editing is based on the first 27 digits of pi: 3.14159265358979323846264338.” – James Benning
A chronology of related events by James Benning:
http://heyevent.com/event/705345356245095/natural-history-by-james-benning
On natural history and FAROCKI, by Michael Pattison:
Hollywood Reporter review by Clarence Tsui:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/natural-history-vienna-review-749830