Screening: Stemple Pass

Stemple Pass is the last installment in a series of films by James Benning—following Two Cabins (2011) and Nightfall (2011)—made in relation to cabins he built in the Sierra Nevada. His two cabins are replicas: one of the retreat described by Henry David Thoreau in walden and the other of the hideout of Ted Kaczynski, the notorious Unabomber, where he fabricated explosive devices from the early 1970s to 1995. The Kaczynski cabin is seen at a distance, with smoke from the chimney indicating an unseen human presence; on the soundtrack, in between moments of pregnant silence (inhabited by natural sounds), Benning’s voice can be heard struggling with Kaczynski’s texts— including a very disturbing diary.