From: Thomas Beard (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Jan 20 2009 - 06:51:08 PST
Light Industry
http://www.lightindustry.org
Landscape Suicide
James Benning, 16mm, 1986, 95 mins
Tuesday, January 20, 2008 at 7:30 pm
55 33rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, New York
"All of James Benningıs features can be regarded as shotgun marriages in
which he attempts to wed his distinctive formal talents and
interests--framing midwestern landscapes with beauty and nostalgia, using
ambiguous offscreen sounds to create narrative expectations--with an
intellectual or social rationale. Landscape Suicide (1986) was almost
certainly his most successful and interesting foray in this direction since
One Way Boogie Woogie (1977). Delving into two murder cases--Bernadette
Prottiıs seemingly unmotivated stabbing murder of another teenage girl in a
California suburb in 1984, and Ed Geinıs even more gratuitous mass slayings
and mutilations in rural Wisconsin in the late 50s--Benning uses actors to
re-create part of the killersı court testimonies and juxtaposes them with
the commonplace settings where these crimes took place. Boldly eschewing the
specious psychological rhetoric that usually accompanies accounts of such
crimes, he creates an open forum for the spectator to contemplate the
mysterious vacancy of these people and these places, and their relationships
to each other. The performances of both actors, Rhonda Bell and Elian
Sacker, are extraordinary achievements, and the chilling, evocative
landscapes have their own stories to tell; the fusion of the two creates
gaps that not even the filmıs confusing title can fill, but the space opened
up is at once powerful and provocative."
- Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Tickets - $7, available at door.
About Light Industry
Light Industry is a new venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New
York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has
begun as a series of events at Industry City in Sunset Park, each
organized by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light
Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art
spaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other
intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings,
performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the
presentation of time-based media and foster an ongoing dialogue amongst a
wide range of artists and audiences within the city.
About Industry City
Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is home to a
cross-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a
regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square
feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now
includes workspace for artists. In addition to offering studios at
competitive rates, Industry City also provides a limited number of low-cost
studios for artists in financial need. This program was conceived in
response to the lack of affordable workspace for artists in New York City
and aims to establish a new paradigm for industrial redevelopment--one that
does not displace artists, workers, local residents or industry but instead
builds a sustainable community in a context that integrates cultural and
industrial production.
For more information, please visit http://www.industrycityartproject.org
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.