James Benning - Ruhr (2009)

The American independent filmmaker James Benning has built up over the period of almost 40 years an oeuvre focusing on places and time. In long, unedited scenes, he shows his vision of, or amazement at, phenomena or landscapes that have long been considered a part of everyday reality. In "Ruhr", Benning allows his camera to roam the Ruhr Valley in Germany, where his parents came from. There are seven meticulously framed takes at places where apparently little happens: a tunnel with a single car, a factory with glowing rods of steel, a forest where planes race overhead, a mosque with a hundred bowing heads, a wall where someone takes up arms against graffiti, a typical street in a working-class district, and an enormous chimney from which smoke is occasionally belched out. They seem to come from a different reality, but are also familiar: worrying and reassuring at the same time.