SECOND SIGHTED (2014)
ALLENSWORTH (2022)
You & Me & the Cosmos Makes Three: An Evening with Deborah Stratman. Wed, Jul 19 | 7:30pm | TMT In person: Deborah Stratman.
James Benning: ALLENSWORTH Thu, Aug 31 | 7:30pm | TMT “The artist is someone who pays attention and reports back.”—James Benning Structuralist, avant-garde, minimalist… These are adjectives often applied in the process of describing the LA-based artist-filmmaker-educator-activist James Benning. For the last five decades, Benning has been an earnest and prolific practitioner of art and film. His innovation and highly refined creative language come from his candid diligence and genuine curiosity. His consistency in filmmaking is affirmation aligned with his work ethics
For over thirty years, Chicago-based artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman has created over forty short, mid-length, and long-form works that combine otherworldly speculative fiction with the history of space exploration and cosmographic inquiry for an output that consistently calls into question systems of power and belief. Her filmic works represent an artistic practice spent in wide-eyed seeking: of humans and our place in the universe, of humanity’s impact on the environment, of physical and intangible remnants of our past. Working with footage and ephemera found in various state and institutional collections, including the Chicago Film Archives and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories, Stratman’s films stretch beyond our earthbound existence to consider human beings as so much more than star stuff, as just one part of the universe’s greater whole. The program will conclude with the Los Angeles premiere of her most recent mid-length film, Last Things , which recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Programmed and note by K.J. Relth-Miller.
and modest approach to exercising his right and responsibility of being an artist and filmmaker.
Born into a working-class, immigrant family in Milwaukee, Benning grew up directly experiencing and understanding the roles and impacts of capitalism and how the brutality of poverty deeply effects individual, community, and/or society, especially in relations to race and racism. Activist turned artist-filmmaker, Benning creates works founded on substantive narratives, manifested through heavily form- based aesthetic language that can potentially minimize the narratives. The evidence is there: Benning wants the audience’s deliberate engagement and participation while they experience his work. Benning’s recent film ALLENSWORTH is a remarkable collage of images and sounds, created from his extensive survey of a ghost town founded in 1908 which became the first municipality in California to be run by African Americans. The crucial historical context, the fundamental component of the film, is reported to us by Benning via the meticulous, bold, and sophisticated language he employs in filmmaking. Programmed and note by Hyesung ii. DIRECTED BY: James Benning. WITH: Faith Johnson. 2022. 65 min. USA. Color. English. DCP.
All films directed by Deborah Stratman.
Total program runtime: 74 min.
Second Sighted 2014. 5 min. USA. B&W, Color. English. DCP. Laika 2021. 5 min. USA. Color. DCP. …These Blazeing Starrs! 2011. 14 min. USA. B&W. English. 16mm. Courtesy Canyon Cinema Foundation. Last Things 2023. 50 min. USA. Color. French, English. 35mm.
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