Scott MacDonald's essay on two recent films by James Benning, "James Benning's Thirteen Lakes and 10 Skies and the Culture of Distraction," has just been published in James Benning, a collection of essays published by the Austrian Film Museum on the occasion of a major retrospective of Benning's work. MacDonald's essay focuses on two recent films by Benning, Thirteen Lakes and 10 Skies.
Benning, whose work is widely popular in Europe and has been influential on both sides of the Atlantic, has been a regular guest of the F.I.L.M. Series at Hamilton. The filmmaker will visit Hamilton in April to present his newest film, casting a glance (2007), a cine-meditation on Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970).
MacDonald's essay comments on the experience of Benning's often super-slow-paced films as a rebellion against modern culture's tendency toward media overload and hysterical consumption. Thirteen Lakes is made up of 13 10-minute shots, each of a different American lake presented in a minimal composition; 10 Skies is composed of 10-minute shots of skyscapes.
An interview conducted by MacDonald with David Gatten, "Gentle Iconoclast," has just been published in Film Quarterly (Winter 2007-08). Gatten has been a guest at Hamilton as part of the F.I.L.M. Series and has visited MacDonald's classes several times during the past few years to present portions of his nine-film project, Secret History of the Dividing Line.
The film's title references History of the Dividing Line and The Secret History of the Line, both by William Byrd II of colonial Virginia. They are central texts in the early representation of American nature and for Gatten's wide-ranging, poetic explorations of cultural transformation, personal history and the visual and graphic arts. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, Gatten is currently working on what will be the fifth film in the Secret History project.
Benning, whose work is widely popular in Europe and has been influential on both sides of the Atlantic, has been a regular guest of the F.I.L.M. Series at Hamilton. The filmmaker will visit Hamilton in April to present his newest film, casting a glance (2007), a cine-meditation on Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970).
MacDonald's essay comments on the experience of Benning's often super-slow-paced films as a rebellion against modern culture's tendency toward media overload and hysterical consumption. Thirteen Lakes is made up of 13 10-minute shots, each of a different American lake presented in a minimal composition; 10 Skies is composed of 10-minute shots of skyscapes.
An interview conducted by MacDonald with David Gatten, "Gentle Iconoclast," has just been published in Film Quarterly (Winter 2007-08). Gatten has been a guest at Hamilton as part of the F.I.L.M. Series and has visited MacDonald's classes several times during the past few years to present portions of his nine-film project, Secret History of the Dividing Line.
The film's title references History of the Dividing Line and The Secret History of the Line, both by William Byrd II of colonial Virginia. They are central texts in the early representation of American nature and for Gatten's wide-ranging, poetic explorations of cultural transformation, personal history and the visual and graphic arts. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, Gatten is currently working on what will be the fifth film in the Secret History project.
