Easy Rider

Filmmaker James Benning visited the locations for the classic road movie Easy Rider (1969). In his characteristic long takes, he for instance shows a lit-up vacancy sign while the soundtrack treats us to a line from Easy Rider: ‘You’ve got a room?’ Sometimes the images are more abstract, like the 10-minute shot of a flowing brook.
But there is always a connection with Easy Rider. For example, Benning ‘copies’ its association between a real horse and a gleaming motorcycle: both have their strength expressed in horse power. An image Benning returns to five times is that of a camp fire so that viewers can think back to the scene in which Jack Nicholson expresses one of the film’s themes to Billy (Dennis Hopper) saying: ‘What you represent to them is freedom.’
With songs by Sadie Benning, Chan Marshall, Suzy Soundz and The Sibleys – the music Benning listened to on the road.