52 Films

Directed by James Benning

[...] And then there’s the largest and fastest growing archive of all time, the Internet, and in particular YouTube. I started here playfully looking in different directions—an early performance by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, a Ché Guevara interview, an instructional video on glock maintenance—but soon the tide of information took over. The range in image quality and subject matter amazed me. I thought there was no longer a need for a camera. I could make whatever I wanted through appropriation. It became addictive and I began to make a film per week. I could be an ethnographic filmmaker, remake my own films or classics, construct things I never thought of making, etc. It was totally liberating. The result is 52 Films." (James Benning)