Judge's Bio
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1942, James Benning earned a degree in mathematics on a baseball scholarship, but dropped out of graduate school to deny his military deferment. Instead, he worked with migrant workers in Colorado and Missouri, eventually receiving his MFA from the University of Wisconsin, where he took up filmmaking. Benning combined his interest in structuralism, cinematic time, and the relationship between sound and image, and a deep sensitivity to composition, color, light and the landscape of his native Wisconsin. Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman selected Benning’s 11 X 14, as one of the top ten films of the 1970s, stating that it "points toward the creation of a new, nonliterary but populist cinema."
After teaching at various universities, Benning moved to Manhattan where his work became more personal and more concerned with universal themes of history, memory and mortality. In AMERICAN DREAMS Benning places his collection of Hank Aaron memorabilia alongside the disturbed writings of Arthur Bremer, the man who shot George Wallace. LANDSCAPE SUICIDE, investigates two famous murders by looking to the landscapes in which they occurred.
Upon moving to California in the 1990s, the relationship between landscape and people became his central theme–beginning with EL VALLEY CENTRO, a look at the agricultural heartland of California, followed by LOS, examining the mostly manmade landscape of the city of Los Angeles. The final film in his "California Trilogy" is SOGOBI, a passionate and beautiful look at California’s wilderness. Benning currently teaches filmmaking at the California Institute for the Arts and is at work on his next project, THIRTEEN LAKES.

" I very much enjoyed the experience of looking. It's great to feel the collective energy of young (and a few older) makers. Non-inclusion should not diminish any of your individual passions. These things are rarely fair. I selected what I liked, not what I thought an audience would like, and what I like most is freshness. I believe that whenever a film is made it should aspire to redefine and not merely echo. This of course is a tall order. It not only requires knowledge of the past but a means to conceptualize. And I am not just referring to experimental film here. New narrative languages, new kinds of documentation, new poetic forms, and yes too, new ways to entertain are all necessary to ensure a dynamic film culture. And this challenge doesn't end with the maker, it is in turn extended to the programmer, the critic, the reviewer, and the audience. I hope this festival will help you better see. "