EIGHT BRIDGES. 2026. Directed by James Benning. North American premiere. DCP. 82 min.
Concluding an unofficial trilogy that began with his beloved Ten Skies and 13 Lakes, EIGHT BRIDGES is the legendary James Benning’s latest exercise in looking and listening. Meeting points between land, water, and the sky that connect the built and natural world, the eight titular structures range from the cinematic and iconic (San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge), to the historical (Selma, Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge), to the self-referential (North Dakota’s Hi-line RR Bridge). In Benning’s typical painterly, elegant style, with sound design as rich as the compositions themselves, the sequences variously emphasize the passing of clouds, the flowing of water, and the churn of commuters, connecting physical manifestations of the American project to contemporary flows of people and capital.