James Benning

Dancing in the Street, 11 grados de separación

Film

2020

Dancing in the Street, 11 grados de separación

After having shared a common experience in Cuba, twelve filmmakers say goodbye to return to their countries and make a pact: to make a collective film that answers the questions: what does it mean to plagiarize images and how to do it in the distance? The mechanism is unusual: a director makes a short and sends it to the next director, who in turn makes his own short for the purpose of plagiarizing the one he received. And so the chain of plagiarism continues until it reaches the last one. Each one interprets in their own way what it means to plagiarize the received film. The first link in the chain is James Benning, one of the world's most patient filmmakers. His extensive plans are replicated in the following fragments. Disobedience moves the exercise away from literality and an exploration of the texture of the images begins. In its repetitive mechanism, we can see that cinema is, in addition to record of reality, an art of images and sound. (Santiago González Cragnolino)

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