AllMovie

James Benning wrote, produced, directed and edited this 16mm documentary, part of his series of film portraits of American landscapes and history. The locations seen here are near the intersection of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona -- areas where Indians dealt with problems in the past and present. The fourth site is the working-class German-American Milwaukee neighborhood of Benning's youth -- now an African-American ghetto. The voiceover narrators (Benning, Hartmut Bitomsky, Billy Woodberry, Yeasup Song) speak of historical tragedies, while the work of four visual artists (Caude Monet, Jasper Johns, Alabama's primitivist Moses Tolliver, and a Native American canyon-wall painter) serves as chapter dividers.