11 x 14 (1977)

11 x 14: Directed by James Benning. With Serafina Bathrick, Ted Brady, Barbara Frankel, Rick Goodwin. One of the most widely praised American avant-garde films in recent years, James Benning’s 1977 feature is a laconic mosaic of single-shot sequences, each offering some sort of image/sound pun or paradox. At once a crypto-narrative with an abstract, peekaboo storyline and a fractured, painterly study of the American midwestern landscape, 11×14 points toward the creation of a new, non-literary but populist cinema.

“11 x 14 refers to the aspect ratio of the film. That is, 11 high by 14 wide.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBlimey! To make this helpful comment I need to produce 10 lines of text. Now thatu0026#39;s pedantic!u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFour score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eNow we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain —that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”