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| | | | | | Deseret | | |  | | |  Part of the series Not Coming to a Theater Near You, presented by the film blog of the same name.
In anticipation of the New York premiere of his new film Ruhr at the NYFF's Views from the Avant-Garde, we present two varied older works by acclaimed experimental documentary filmmaker James Benning. Also screening at 7pm: American Dreams.
Completed a year before the 1996 centennial of Utah's statehood—and titled after the Mormons' original, rejected name for the state—James Benning's Deseret explores the state through fragments of history and topography.
As it impassively records Utah's majestic landscapes (mountains, deserts and red rock country) and quiet man-made constructions (churches, highways and fast-food restaurants), ninety-three articles from the New York Times from 1852 to 1992 are excerpted in voiceover, documenting Mormon codes, the construction of Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, violence between Mormons, Indians, the federal government and government-sanctioned toxic waste dumping. Through this collage of texts and images, Benning creates an expansive portrait in which, as Jonathan Rosenbaum has it, "the viewer is...compelled to construct a Utah and a history of his or her own—a makeshift novel or at least fragments of such a novel—in which all these elements belong."
Director: James Benning. 82 min. 1995. 16mm.
This is part of a series of monthly screenings curated by the editors of Not Coming to a Theater Near You, an online publication that assumes a bias toward older, foreign and sometimes unknown films that merit a second look. | |
| | Programs, venues, instructors/moderators are subject to change or cancellation without notice |
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