Synopsis
Ten shots of skies.
2004 Directed by James Benning
Ten shots of skies.
Watch the restoration HERE. Lossless blu-ray download available soon.
If you've followed me on this site for any length of time, you'll likely know my obsession with American filmmaker James Benning. Just yesterday I referred to him as the greatest American Filmmaker to ever live, and hinted at a Benning Project™️ I was working on. I expected it to take a lot longer than it did, but it turns out that my gaming PC is even more adept at rendering HUGE files than I thought possible (shouts out the new hardware acceleration in Premiere 2023), so I'm happy to reveal, much sooner than expected, that I have been working on a "restoration" of James Benning's seminal film Ten Skies.
Erika…
I started this previous weekend with a film and a book. The film was James Benning’s Ten Skies - a simple, experimental film that consists of ten shots of skies around Southern California, each one lasting exactly ten minutes. The book was Erika Balsom’s Decadent Editions essay on the film. It was a carefully planned pairing - I took Friday off of work for a mental health day and I intended to spend the sunny portions of the day on the beach where I do most of my reading. I figured that my own sky would make a perfect companion for Balsom’s essay and I was completely right.
I’d highly recommend picking up Balsom’s book. It covers everything that you could possibly…
do you remember when you were little? and your mom told you not to stare at the sun but you didn’t know or care about why so you tilted your head up and stared defiantly until your eyes watered and you admitted defeat.
do you remember when you were a little older? your parents were fighting and you didn’t know why. you were scared and wanted to be alone. so you went to the backyard and laid on top of the picnic table and looked up at the clouds.
do you remember when you got older? you and your brother would sneak into the backyard every night and lean against the hot tub while smoking a joint. you’d stare up…
the world is a beautiful place and i am no longer afraid to die
bro watch a chit load of james benning with high quality headphones in a dark room with a small fan blowing cool air into your face sipping on a cool refreshing beverage with your feet in a warm foot bath or even one of those fish baths where they nibble on your feet and you will see it is pure unadulterated relaxation and not cringeworthy
Clouds drift, I enter a meditative state. Almost as if nature is painting abstracts for us. A plethora of shapes emerge as I stare. A duck, a man, a house. Watched with some friends and we all saw the same things, each of us would call it out “There! There! It’s an elephant!” and the other would yell in agreement. Not sure if we were all seeing the same things or that’s just the influence of group perceptions on art. In any case, this is a film essential to the CCC canon and a revolutionary work.
a cloudbuster is a device designed by austrian psychoanalyst wilhelm reich, which reich claimed could produce rain by manipulating what he called 'orgone energy' present in the atmosphere.
the cloudbuster was intended to be used in a way similar to a lightning rod: focusing it on a location in the sky and grounding it in some material that was presumed to absorb orgone -- such as a body of water -- would draw the orgone energy out of the atmosphere, causing the formation of clouds and rain. reich conducted dozens of experiments with the cloudbuster, calling the research 'cosmic orgone engineering'.
I close my eyes. I am at the top of the mountain. I saw an angel. We are dancing under the same sky. I could live in these moments forever. Floating like the clouds do. I can’t stop chasing time. Time's running out as often as it does. Behold the clouds that float above, they too will slip away just as time has. When I open my eyes, I wish to see you.
Eleven Skies
On July 1st 2021 I watched this film at Light Industry in Brooklyn, NY. About a month prior I read Ten Skies by Erika Balsom in one day, I had never seen the movie until July 1st. In the following 13 parts I would like to tell you why this is my favorite film of all time, and it’s not even close.
Prologue
I recently read an Antonioni interview where the interviewer described his day up to the point of the interview as an intro. I have seen this done multiple times, and I fucking hate it. That being said, I think it is completely necessary that I do that for this “review.” There is not much to…
Had a really beautiful time showing this masterpiece to my friend Carson. He responded to it so strongly, it feels special to accidentally show another person their new favorite film. We discussed each individual sky, its progression, its termination, and we talked for many hours after it had ended.
I'm convinced the entire universe exists in this film, and ultimately it's one of the most optimistic things I've ever seen. I have to read Erika Balsom's book on it.
James Benning filmed ten skies, edited it together, and it's better than most films, period. But is he the artist, or has nature simply played its course? Without the frame, would we even see the sky in this way? In any case, we're beyond blessed to have it.
Seen on my friend's projector