11 x 14
- 11 x 14, 1977
James Benning
USA 1977
16mm, colour, sound, 81min.
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)
