Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 342: Wed Dec 10

One-Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later (Benning, 1977/2005): Barbican Cinema, 7pm


This is part of the Architecture on Film season at the Barbican. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Titled after Piet Mondrian's painting Broadway Boogie Woogie, James Benning's experimental masterpiece One Way Boogie Woogie (1977) consists of 60 one-minute takes shot with a stationary camera in an industrial valley near his native Milwaukee. The film strikes a graceful balance between abstraction (either found or created) and personal history, with ingenious uses of on- and offscreen sound, and it plays like a portfolio of 60 miniature films, each a suspenseful puzzle and a beautifully composed mechanism. A few years ago Benning returned to his hometown to fashion this shot-for-shot remake (2005), planting his camera in the same places and, whenever possible, using the same people. Though it's not on the same level, it's a poignant and fascinating companion piece.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is an extract.

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