One Way Boogie Woogie / 27 years later

The second film by the 16mm master James Benning in this programme. Both this film and the landscape film (or rather skyscape film) Ten Skies are strictly formal in their approach. Ten Skies is made up of 10 shots each lasting 10 minutes and One Way Boogie Woogie / 27 years later is made up of (twice) 60 shots of 60 seconds. Yet the films look very different. The gaze upwards to the clouds in Ten Skies gives a very different perspective from the ugly yet beloved industrial landscapes of One Way Boogie Woogie / 27 years later .
Benning shot his first One Way Boogie Woogie in 1977. He wanted to record the demise of the industrial landscape in his birthplace Milwaukee. Twenty-seven years later he shot the same film over, as he puts it himself. The same one-minute shots of the same location and preferably with the same extras. In this way a special twin film emerged that registers changes in one place. Alongside humorous moments, the inevitability of the creeping destruction known as progress is predominant. Because Benning shot the second film on different and clearer film material, the leap in time is even more tangible. In addition he used the same soundtrack, an alienating effect that makes lost time audible, as it were.
Anyone who thinks that remakes are unimaginative commercial phenomena will understand after seeing this film that it can also be an experimental genre with great essayist opportunities for the future. (GjZ)