James Benning

I would lie if I said I wasn't intrigued by the idea of a film class featuring a math lecture from a very prominent experimental filmmaker. What James said about the disengagement of math teachers and lecturers from their audience really rang true with me. If he had been my 8th grade Algebra teacher, I might not be in film school--I guess I can count my blessings. While the math he did really was not advanced at all (it really did feel like a condensed version of 8th grade Algebra--never mind I failed 8th grade Algebra), my attention was held just by the energy he radiated long enough to let him apply the lesson to my reality.

He held a particular fascination for the elegance of simplicity in mathematical logic. Math and the sciences always work from specific to general in their proofs, applying a hypothesis to a very specific set of circumstances, then broadening their proof of concept to cover a much more general set of circumstances--the ultimate goal of which is to develop a unified "theory of everything." That elegance of simplicity is a philosophy I've held for a long time myself. In my work, I try to express the most I can with the least--a glance, a raised eyebrow, a camera angle, and pencil stroke, a sound effect, or simply silence itself--which, I think, is what he meant when he said we should look for that kind of elegance in our own work.