Michael Benson
Michael Benson (US/SI) is a filmmaker, journalist and photographer.
Wiretap 6.11: Michael Benson; photo: Jan Sprij
Michael Benson, a film-maker, journalist and photographer, lived in ex-Yugoslavia during the early 80's and in the Republic of Slovenia during that country's transition to statehood (and its entire decade as an independent country). His work with Slovenian artists, including the well-known NSK art movement, is one result of a long-term interest in the territory where art and politics meet. Benson's first feature-length documentary film, Predictions of Fire, was distributed across the United States, and screened in New York's Film Forum cinema. (The film also won several "best documentary" awards at international film festivals.)
Benson is currently working on Zero, a film about theater in zero-gravity, and also More Places Forever, a feature length global documentary road movie. His previous experience includes numerous short films and a one-hour documentary for MTV on Russian rock called Tell Tchaikovsky the News. In the 80's Benson was the first American journalist to document the Soviet underground rock counter-culture; his texts and photographs were published in Rolling Stone, The Nation, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times, Interview, and a broad spectrum of European and world media outlets. He continues to write, and will have a cover story about cyberspace space travel in the December, 2000 Atlantic Monthly magazine.
