Sadie Benning: Videos (1989-1992)
Director: Sadie Benning
Year Released: 1992
Rating: 3.0
In this age of the YouTube confessional and umpteen high school brats making odious diary videos it's a great relief to watch the teenage films of Ms. Benning, armed with her music collection, her imagination and a Pixelvision Camera (courtesy of Dad). Much has been made of her explorations of gender identity and sexuality - and justifiably so - but I'm fascinated by her scrapbook approach to filmmaking: she uses objects of her youth like dolls, she makes posters, she re-videotapes movies and game shows, she sticks the camera in her own face, she makes her own titles and jots her poetry down on slips of paper that scroll across the bottom of the screen. She's not afraid of editing. She doesn't care about copyrights. It's a thoughtful reflection of her personal world living in Wisconsin (tellingly, her camera rarely if ever leaves her bedroom) - though that world is very much a lo-fi one - the camerawork is shaky and sometimes hard-to-watch. Teen-dom has never been (and will never be) the ideal time for humility and restraint, but she knows of what she speaks: crushes (Jollies) and loneliness and fantasy (It Wasn't Love is dedicated to "bad girls" everywhere). Here's to bad girls....
