Smoking a Cigarette, Making a Film

(NYTimes) “Don’t be fooled by the smoke,” James Benning told a sold-out audience at the Toronto International Film Festival screening of his latest film “Twenty Cigarettes.” A collection of living portraits, in which 20 smokers, all friends of his, face the camera for the time it takes to consume a cigarette, it is both an homage to Andy Warhol’s fabled screen tests and a quintessential film for Mr. Benning, 68, a giant of American experimental cinema whose conceptually minimalist works tend to open up vast spaces for reflection. Continued