Twenty Cigarettes

Benning’s films usually consist of exactly what their titles promise, although the chronicler of America (industrial) landscapes turns his attention to a new “territory” here: TWENTY CIGARETTES, a film the length of 20 cigarettes, shows 20 smokers of different backgrounds and ages and thus also 20 different ways to smoke: with experience, calm, insecurity, reluctance. Just as the shots of 20 faces become miniature portraits of the smokers akin to a screen test, the slowly dissipating smoke of their cigarettes functions as an image of time evaporating.