Film critic Louis-Jean Decazes has curated this program to give viewers a chance to reconnect with the fundamentals of cinema, that window onto the world. Most of the films in this series explore themes of disorientation and a sense of being out of sync. With sought-after and rare films from Straub-Huillet, Akerman, Ivens...
James Benning delves into the American Midwest in 65 shots that focus on life outside the cities, in the suburbs. A story seems to emerge from the whole, but in the end it does not come together, inviting us instead to appreciate the connections linking the images together.
James Benning
James Benning is an American independent filmmaker and educator. Over the course of his 40-year career he has made over 25 feature films. He was hailed cinema's voice of the Midwest in the late 70s with his films 11 x 14 and One Way Boogie Woogie, made in Chicago, Milwaukee and the surrounding rural region. He then moved to lower Manhattan, where he continued to make films, most notably, American Dreams (1984) and Landscape Suicide (1986). Since 1987, he has taught film and video at California Institute of the Arts. Known as a minimalist filmmaker, Benning has employed diverse methods, themes, structures, and aesthetics, investigating narrative and anti-narrative modes, personal history, collective memory, place, industry, and landscape.
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Travelogues, images en errance
Dès les origines du cinéma, la curiosité du regard occidental s’empare de ce nouvel outil, la caméra, pour explorer l’ailleurs. À l’orée du XXe siècle, les travelogues – ces documentaires de voyage mêlant découverte et exotisme – émergent dans le sillage de l’invention des frères Lumière. Munis de leurs appareils, opérateurs, ethnographes et explorateurs capturent des images du lointain avec une ambition d’objectivité, offrant au public une fenêtre inédite sur des cultures étrangères, souvent fantasmées.
Entretien avec James Benning
Programmateur invité du cycle Travelogues, Louis-Jean Decazes a eu l’occasion de s’entretenir avec James Benning, monument du cinéma expérimental américain. Ils ont abordé son premier long métrage, 11 x 14 (1977), qui sera projeté à la Cinémathèque québécoise le 28 septembre. À travers 65 plans-tableaux, Benning capte l’essence du Midwest américain – sa géographie, ses campagnes, ses banlieues, et le quotidien de ses habitant·e·s
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