
For this essential masterpiece of our era I have no other words than these lines...
This companion piece to 13 Lakes shares its sister film's structural method and fascination with light, but this time rather than travelling the country, Benning stayed closer to home. Stepping out into his back yard he pointed his camera skyward and captured ten skies of radically differing look and hue, some peaceful and drifting, others filled with scurrying drama. Each shot is held for exactly ten minutes, whilst below the skies, the sound gives some sense of the location, and its nature. Watching Ten Skies is the cinematic equivalent of the delirious process of lying on one's back staring at the sky and letting one's head clear into a near meditative state.
Sandra Hebron
'...the experience of watching - and hearing - is fabulously rich and intense. The skyscapes are filled with life and change at the speed of light. The soundtrack creates an equally rich narrative space by way of ten short stories that are 'insinuated' without ever being 'explained'. A masterpiece'
Alexander Howarth
"This masterpiece by James Benning is an elaborately constructed montage of ten ten-minute takes, a mesmerizing study of time, light, movement, and moisture that traces the shifting relations between clouds and earth, nature and people. It had much more to say to me than most narrative films, though the subtly shifting patterns and textures of each shot provide plenty of narrative as they tell the story of our own perceptions."
Jonathan Rosenbaum
If you missed the twin film of this one, than download it now!