The Cinematheque

Filmed between 1974 and 1977, these structuralist shorts present Bette Gordon’s emerging thematic preoccupations—sexuality, mobility, liminality, and the American national character—as well as her collaborations with independent filmmaker James Benning, who co-directs three. From the busy streets of Chicago to the backseat of a vehicle travelling coast-to-coast, these works contort and relocate American cinematic traditions into corporeal experiences and nonconformist expressivity. Through the use of an optical printer, the films employ a mathematical precision that Gordon calls ​“the physics of the image as narrative,” creating manually decelerated, superimposed, and kinetic sequences—a protracted, avant-garde film language. Gordon and Benning’s perspectives on the political, social, geographic, and consumerist shifts in 1970s America were both revelatory and prescient, chronicling a nation constantly on the brink of turmoil.

Video introduction by curator Saffron Maeve.

Michigan Avenue
USA 1974
James Benning, Bette Gordon
6 min. DCP

I‑94
USA 1974
James Benning, Bette Gordon
3 min. DCP

An Erotic Film
USA 1975
Bette Gordon
3 min. DCP

Webbs
USA 1976
Bette Gordon
11 min. DCP

An Algorithm
USA 1977
Bette Gordon
8 min. DCP

The United States of America
USA 1975
James Benning, Bette Gordon
27 min. DCP