One Way Boogie Woogie (1978) by James Benning
Sunday, February 28, 1982, 8:00 pm
Vertical Features Remake by Peter Greenway; One Way Boogie Woogie by James Benning
Vertical Features Remake (1976) 45 min. by Peter Greenaway – Ostensibly an account of the fictitious Institute of Reclamation and Restoration’s several attempts to reconstruct ornithologist Tulse Luper’s study of the aesthetic and ecological significance of various trees, posts, and poles on the English landscape. “In fact, the film is an attack on the whole British film culture, with the IRR (British Film Institute, Culture, Time Out) on one side and pedantic academia on the other. This never becomes a crude allegory or a simple protest, though; the short films-within-the-film are remarkable on their own terms and the musical collaboration with Michael Nyman makes for a harsh lyricism.” —Chris Auty, Time Out
One Way Boogie Woogie (1978) 60 min. by James Benning – “Explores the capacity of film to mime traditional representational painting while at the same time using offscreen space and movement to contrast the two art forms. One Way Boogie Woogie comprises 60 shots. Each is one minute long depicting scenes of industrial America—garages, warehouses, storage tanks, railroad yards. Each shot has its own pleasing compositional drama in which place and pattern vie for attention. Pattern always wins, the pictorial equilibrium enhancing a sense of order that corresponds appropriately with the painterly theme of stillness. This sense of order derives from Benning’s framing, which is predicated on balance, centrality, symmetry and frontality. ” —Noel Carroll, Soho Weekly