James Benning’s first film called The United States of America was a 1975 trip across the country,
James Benning’s first film called The United States of America was a 1975 trip across the country, capturing its scenery through a car windshield. This second one also crisscrosses the nation, but without a car, carving it up instead into a series of static shots of just under two minutes, one for each state, presented alphabetically, from Heron Bay, Alabama to Kelly, Wyoming. The names of the places are nondescript, but the images attached to them are anything but, immaculately composed shots of landscape, cityscape and the spaces in between. As we move from A to Z, the images coalesce into a portrait of today’s USA, tracing out its fault lines almost in passing: fenced-off facilities, a river bed running dry, factories and refineries, run-down streets and gas stations, a camp under a bridge. The past is there too, seeping up through the songs and speeches that sporadically pierce the background noise or the motifs that evoke a whole career; the clouds, trains and cabins are stand-ins for films, not just states. As always, there’s time for more abstract thoughts too: each image may stand for a state, but representativity is slippery. Which state is more cinematic than the rest?
主演:杰夫·丹尼尔斯,埃文·罗,比尔·坎普,阿梅尔·艾米恩,乔恩·迈克尔·希尔,Shanita Wilburn,Nathan Rudd,L. Warren Young,乔什·帕斯,杰瑞卡·辛顿,阿特金斯·埃斯特蒙德,Keith Brooks,Scott Daniel Johnson,库尔特·岳,葛人杰·海恩斯,安德里亚·弗兰克尔,理查德·托普尔,约翰·莱西,布里特·乔治,Sam Wren Vincent