11 x 14

An interesting 70-something minute avante-garde opus, a real patience-tester to those with only a passing interest in non-narrative experiments. But the average movie-goer is not only outside this film's intended audience. It is not availaible. I saw it at a film class at City Collge.

It consiststs a series of unedited static shots, taken from inside a train, from the back seat of a crowded car, behind some golfers, looking at a tractor lumbering across a field. In two instances, Bob Dylan's Black Diamond Bay (from "Desire") plays out its full duration. And it's long -- seven and a half minutes. The first is of two women in bed, in extreme slow-motion. The second is of a chimney. An industrial chimney made of brick simply puffs out smoke for the entire time it takes for the song to finish. Perhaps comparing the lyrics themselves to these images can shed light on an intended meaning or significance -- or is that over-analyzing.

It's basically an 80-minute slideshow. It looks like moving slide photos taken on someone's summer road trip. On paper, the idea of something so plain and simple would seem to be deathly dull, but there is in eerie quality that arisesas you approach an hour of watching these shots. Occasionally seeing people, their faces always slightly obscure, creates a sensation of spying. You're not following their story or absorbing their character; you're just watching them. In all the slow, static shots, the sum of the whole thing seems to hint at some sort of broad impression of Americana.

I understand that the filmmaker, James Benning has no interest in transferring this 16 mm celluloid opus to DVD (along with all his films I assume) so I recommend taking notes. Savor it. Think about it. It might be the only time you see 11 x 14.

PS I still don't know what "11 x 14" refers to, if I find out I'll let you know.

11 x 14 refers to the aspect ratio of the film. That is, 11 high by 14 wide.

Blimey! To make this helpful comment I need to produce 10 lines of text. Now that's pedantic!

Four 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.

Now 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.

But, 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.