James Benning
A transitional film at the end of his first decade of filmmaking, James Benning’s Grand Opera introduces a degree of storytelling to his previously more formalist devices. Benning calls the film his “first attempt at writing my own kind of history” and, in a sense, it also serves to write himself into history, acutely measuring his place as a Midwestern experimental filmmaker, then based in Oklahoma, in relationship to the avant-garde scene situated in New York. The film thus features homages to the prominent experimental cinema of the time, including a spoof of Wavelength, as well as cameos from Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton and Yvonne Rainer. Woven with these sequences are other characteristic Benning gambits – a compilation of every house he ever lived in, a preoccupation with the history of Pi, and the looming threat that a building will explode.
Programme:
Grand Opera: An Historical Romance, 16mm, 1979, USA, 84 mins, colour
Film by James Benning
featuring Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton,
George Landow, Sadie Benning and Yvonne Rainer
Screened with: Poles Apart, Nicky Hamlyn, Regular 8mm, 1990, UK, 4 minutes
@ the Art Bar, Gladstone Hotel | 1214 Queen St West
Tuesday January 19, 2010 | 7:30 pm screening, $5
Grand Opera
Michael Snow in Grand Opera
