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Film

Darkest Americana & Elsewhere III: Films, Video & Words of James Benning

When

Saturday Feb 27, 2010 (7:30–9:30pm)

Where

Sfc_banner_ad22077-0_show_page

San Francisco Cinematheque (Venue Partner)

145 9th St, Suite 240

415.552.1990

Directions: Screenings are held at venues across the Bay Area. Check event listings for venue information.

Price

members: $5 / non-members: $10

San Francisco Cinematheque says…

Screening at Presentation Theatre USF (map)

James Benning in-person

presented in association with the USF Film Studies Program

After nearly three decades of creating films in U.S. locations, James Benning’s feature-length Ruhr is his first work shot entirely outside of North America (and his first work on digital video). Commissioned for German television, the film is an outsider’s portrait of Germany’s Ruhr District. An industrial and working class environment—recalling Benning’s hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin—the Ruhr is the center of Germany’s coal and steel-making industries and the site of massive Allied attacks during World War II. Consisting of only six shots, the feature-length video provides lingering insight into the filmmaker’s exploration of an uncannily familiar foreign landscape.

Ruhr screens with the single-shot short Fire & Rain, an impressionistic meditation on the four elements, created in the heart of a steel mill. (STEVE POLTA)

James Benning: Ruhr (2009), 120 min.

» : Fire & Rain (2009), 1.5 min.