New James Benning Documentary Playing at NYFF

FILMMAKER JAMES BENNING AT VIENNALE IN 2012. SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

On Sunday, October 8th, and Monday, October 9th, 2023, James Benning’s new film ALLENSWORTH will screen at the New York Film Festival in the Currents section.

In ALLENSWORTH, “James Benning uses his structuralist approach to landscape to etch an evocative portrait” of Allensworth, California, a town “established, run, and entirely financed by African Americans, including Allen Allensworth, a former slave who became a high-ranking officer in the U.S. Army.” This community was “thriving at the turn of the 20th century, and would be home to the state’s first Black school district. [But] decades later, due to environmental factors and economic downturn, the town was all but abandoned, later to be reconstructed.” This screening of ALLENSWORTH will be followed by a Q&A with Benning and filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson; Everson’s recent films AIR FORCE TWO and BOYD V. DENTON will precede Benning’s documentary at the NYFF.

Benning remains one of our most significant, formalist avant-garde filmmakers, and GME is proud to be the sole distributor of his films to the North American university market. His lengthy and distinguished career goes back to the early 1970s and includes one-person shows, retrospectives, and screenings at innumerable international festivals and cinematheques. He holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin and teaches at CalArts.

Currently available from GME as both DVDs and DVD/DSL bundles are Benning’s films 11 X 14, ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE, 27 YEARS LATER (1977-2012), GRAND OPERA (1979), AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST & FOUND) (1984), O PANAMA (1985), LANDSCAPE SUICIDE (1986), DESERET (1995), FOUR CORNERS (1997), his CALIFORNIA TRILOGY (1999-2001), CASTING A GLANCE (2007), RR (2007), NATURAL HISTORY (2009), and RUHR (2014).

More details about these individual offerings are available here.