Movies: Sadie Benning

Interpretation of Rita Mae Brown's groundbreaking lesbian coming-of-age novel Rubyfruit Jungle....

In NORTH ON EVERS James Benning takes the road movie seriously, making his circular trip across the U.S. a marvelously photographed, intensely felt, and disturbing portrait of contemporary America. In many ways, this recent film is a departure of Ben...

These five short videos introduce Judy, a paper maché puppet who ruminates on her position in society. Like Judy, of the famous Punch and Judy puppet duo, Benning’s Judy seems to experience the world from the outside, letting things happen to her rat...

The narration and intertitles describe the ultimate teenage fantasy road-trip: a female version of Bonnie and Clyde in love, in trouble, and unstoppable. With dreams of freedom, a life of crime, and the glamour of Hollywood, the film depicts the ulti...

“Nicky is seven. His parents are older and meaner.” A Place Called Lovely references the types of violence individuals find in life, from actual beatings, accidents and murders, to the more insidious violence of lies, social expectations, and betraye...

A woman from poor upbringing grows up to be the leader of a group of extremely rugged individuals....

Set to music by Bikini Kill (an all-girl band from Washington), Girl Power is a raucous vision of what it means to be a radical girl in the 90s. Benning relates her personal rebellion against school, family, and female stereotypes as a story of perso...

Benning gives a chronology of her crushes and kisses, tracing the development of her nascent sexuality....

When she was 16, Benning stopped going to high school for three weeks and stayed inside with her camera, her TV set, and a pile of dirty laundry. Living Inside mirrors her psyche during this time. With the image breaking up between edits, the rough q...

Flat Is Beautiful is an experimental live-action cartoon using masks, animation, subtitles, drawings, and dramatic scenes to investigate the psychic life of an androgynous eleven-year-old girl. Growing up in a working class neighborhood with her sing...

A diverse program of films and videos by various artists who challenge conventional representations of gender, family and sexuality, curated by Tom Kalin for Drift Distribution....

Setting her pixelvision camera on herself and her room, Benning searches for a sense of identity and respect as a woman and a lesbian. Acting alternately as confessor and accuser, the camera captures Benning’s anger and frustration at feeling trapped...

Shot in black and white Super-8, this lyrical short follows a wandering, disengaged youth through grey afternoons. Features the hard-edged music of Come, an alternative band from Boston....

Sadie Benning's first film. A version of the teenage diary, Benning places her feelings of confusion and depression alongside grisly tales of tabloid headlines and brutal events in her neighborhood....

This music video for the band Julie Ruin, fronted by Kathleen Hanna, formerly of Bikini Kill, critiques the cynical music marketeers of corporate America. Criticism particularly targets campaigns aimed at women, which Benning and Hanna refer to here ...

The two-channel video departs from Benning’s earlier work, cutting together hundreds of the artist’s gouache drawings of urban landscapes, figures, and abstractions. With its fragmented split-screen perspective, durational takes of still drawings, an...

An examination of the filmmaker's childhood, femininity and identity, incorporating home movies of the filmmaker as an infant....