Eleven by Fourteen

German title: Elf mal Vierzehn

Alternative title: 11x14

Director: James Benning    → show biography   ← hide biography

Biography: James Benning, born in 1942 in Milwaukee, USA, began working as an independent filmmaker in 1972, even before studying film at the University of Wisconsin. From 1977 to 1980 he taught at the universities of California and Oklahoma, then moved to New York to continue his work as an independent filmmaker. In 2009 he switched from 16mm to digital filmmaking. Since then his work has included installation and site specific art with many shows in galleries and museums. Besides his current film/art work, Benning has taught at the California Institute of the Arts since 1987. Since 1977 Benning has participated in the Forum and Forum Expanded with 19 works, his latest participation being Maggie's Farm in 2018. "Benning's talent has always had more to do with form than with content—more to do with style than with "having something to say," as many people would put it, even though form and style can be as expressive as content. Leftist politics often hover in the background or around the edges of Benning's films..." (Jonathan Rosenbaum)

Country: USA

Year: 1977

Synopsis: In 1976 Benning shot his first feature film 11 x 14, a landscape study of the midwest. It shows pictures of an unexplained voyage through the country and the stops made during that journey, one of them being a minute-long shot of a ride on an elevated train through the slums of Chicago, with the highest skyscraper functioning as a far away vanishing point. “I wanted to make a narrative film, which deals predominantely with form and structure, i.e. the composition, color and texture of the image and the space inside and ouside the picture were supposed to form the actual narrative and simultaneously move the story to the background. The underlying story does not try to reproduce reality, but to establish a context, within which every person can interact with the formal and metaphorical elements of the film. The narrative is open on purpose and has an open end, to emphasize the fact, that the reality of the film is not constructed merely by the film itself, but from the experience of every single spectator watching the film. Each viewer should create his own metaphors from the film. The filmic style, however – using real time and a documentary, stationary camera – objects the concept of metaphor." (James Benning)

Language: without dialogue

Forum participation year: 1977

Forum catalogue PDF: Download

Tags: Experimental film, Experimental film