Artist's Talk & Film Screening of "The War"

James Benning is a singular American filmmaker whose unique brand of ¿narrativity¿ and radical approach to cinematic duration makes him impossible to classify within the cinematic avant-garde. Neither strictly a structuralist nor a minimalist, Benning concentrates on interrogating the very act of seeing. His explorations of visual perception through intense contemplations of landscape and place are undertaken within the realm of documentary experience.Benning has taught filmmaking and experimental sound at the California Institute of the Arts since 1987. His work has screened around the world, including the Vienna International Film Festival, the London Film Festival, Sundance, Rotterdam, the International Forum des Jungen Films, Berlin; Image Forum, Japan. He is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship."The War" is an archival record of present history, with footage from 2006 to 2012 found on the Internet. Prominently featured is footage of the Russian activist group Voina ("war"), much of it art-activist videos produced by Voina depicting acts against the police and the Russian state. Also represented is Pussy Riot's Russian Orthodox Church musical intervention. The material is not contextualized at first, presented undated and unlabeled and without translation until the end of the film, when title cards provide the context.