2011-2020 Documentary Experimental James Benning USA

James Benning – Stemple Pass (2012)

adminJanuary 13, 2019

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Quote:
Benning, like Kaczynski a mathematician who came of age in a working-class Midwestern family in the late 1950s/early 1960s, was able not only to get hold of Kaczynski’s secret journals but also managed to decipher their code (giving added significance to the filmmaker’s reprise of his subject’s words: “FBI, suck my cock!”).

Four thirty-minute static shots (one per season of the year) of a tiny cabin amidst a vast mountain wilderness comprise Stemple Pass. The non-chronologically ordered scenes are introduced by “ten seconds of black to cleanse the palette,” the given season’s name, and text stating the Kaczynski material—ranging from the early 1970s to 2001 and including journals, encrypted documents, the Unabomber Manifesto published by The New York Times and The Washington Post, and a prison interview—from which Benning reads in voice-over narration. In addition to his voice, we hear synchronously recorded sounds of the habitat: birds, the occasional motor, rainfall—although the director concedes some degree of manipulation such as “adding the helicopter.”