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In the films of directors Richard Linklater, left, and James Benning share a common concern with the sense of time’s passing.

Early on in Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater, a documentary by film critic and teacher Gabe Klinger, one of the titular subjects addresses an audience at a movie theatre in Austin, Tex. Richard Linklater emerges onstage, that evening, not as the director of Before Midnight and Boyhood, but rather as the director of the Austin Film Society. Playing the double role of both cineaste and cinephile, he enthuses to the crowd about their good fortune in getting to see films by "one of the world's great visual artists." The artist in question is James Benning, the second man out in Double Play, as well as Linklater's elder and long-time friend – and someone sure to receive a similarly effusive welcome when he and Klinger appear in support of this project on Saturday evening at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox.

In the abstract, Benning and Linklater make for an odd pair to profile. Not every Linklater picture has the star power of School of Rock or the staying power of Dazed and Confused, but even his most independent films remain commercial in nature. On the other hand, Benning's have little to do with movie stars or box-office returns (the titles of typical works like Thirteen Lakes or Nightfall should give the curious some idea what to expect). Benning often structures his films around landscape and duration rather than character or plot, as Klinger shows in one of the first extended excerpts in Double Play. A wordless, static shot of one of those lakes appears onscreen, lingering for close to two minutes (the original runs to 10), as we merely contemplate the way a land mass seems to hover over the water, thanks to the horizon's having faded away.

When Linklater finally speaks over the last few frames of that image – encouraging viewers to think about what happens not just onscreen, but in their minds as well – it becomes clear that Klinger's film will be more than a simple record of these artists' friendship. More importantly, Double Play can double as a work of film criticism and interpretation, too. So Linklater provides insight into the experience of watching a Benning film, here, but to witness Benning's patient long takes and concrete sense of place in this context also coaxes our understanding of Linklater's oeuvre in new directions.

The most obvious concern these directors share is the sense of time's passing, which should be no surprise following the recent release of Boyhood, Linklater's 12-years-in-the-making opus, a film whose actors age before our eyes. Double Play often returns to the question of how these filmmakers understand time – "All of life is just memory," says Benning, while one of Linklater's characters opines, "Time is a lie" – but the film is never less than subtle in the comparisons it makes. Whether it's cutting together shots of trains from either artist's films, or pondering either man's devotion to baseball (Benning was a young Milwaukeean during Hank Aaron's All Star reign; Linklater went to college on a baseball scholarship), Klinger's film leaves it to the viewer to read significance into the parallels he draws.

This narration by suggestion is a technique that Klinger borrows both from Linklater's work – think of the blanks we must fill in, thanks to the years missing between each new entry in the Before series of films – and from Benning's. In his masterful American Dreams (lost and found), which also screens this weekend, Benning juxtaposes items of Hank Aaron memorabilia, snippets of contemporaneous pop songs and news reports, and excerpts from foreboding handwritten diaries. No explicit connection exists between these elements. What we see onscreen only sets things in motion in each viewer's mind, like a well-hit pitch in a major-league game: Benning's or Klinger's films may put all these balls in the air, but in the end it's up to us to make the connections and complete the play.

Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater screens at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. Benning's American Dreams (lost and found) and Chicago Loop screen at 8:45 p.m. (tiff.net).

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