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El
Valley Centro
(first
shown 22 January 2000, Sundance Film Festival)
Los (26th October 2001, Vienna Film Festival)
Sogobi (7th February 2002, International Forum,
Berlin Film Festival)
I
began El Valley Centro in
November of 1998; I was driving through the Great Central Valley looking
for places to film. I wasn’t going to start shooting for at least six
months; I wanted to just look and listen – to get to know the Valley well
before I would make images. But almost immediately I came across an oil
well fire with flames high into the sky. I returned home for my Bolex
and Nagra. Determined that landscape is a function of time, I let a full
roll of 16mm film (100 feet) run through the camera. At that moment I
knew I would make a portrait of The Great Central Valley using 35 two
and a half minute shots.
Nearing
the completion of El Valley
Centro, I began planning an urban companion piece, Los, that
was to be a portrait of Los Angeles. It seemed logical, for the politics
of water certainly run from the Valley to the City. Los would have
the same structure as El Valley Centro and would look and listen
with the same intensity. The two films would be connected with
the last shot of El Valley Centro pumping water out of the Valley
over Wheeler Ridge while the first shot of Los would show Mulholland’s
first spillway (still in use) bringing water into LA.
As
soon as Los was completed
I added Sogobi to make it a trilogy, the urban and rural portraits
needed the Californian wilderness to put them in perspective. Following
the same structure Sogobi would look and listen to that wilderness.
The first shot of Sogobi would relate to the last shot of Los,
and the last shot of Sogobi would return to the first shot of El
Valley Centro, revealing its mystery. The entire trilogy would
become an interrelated puzzle.
James
Benning, December 2001
27th
April, 2002
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