Benning designed Los as the urban companion piece to his earlier film, El Valley Centro. A portrait of Los Angeles that avoids the city proper in favor of the urban landscapes that make up its peripheral sprawl into the desert, the film evokes the intertwined complexity of the many societies and topographies that comprise Los Angeles.

A true city film, L.A.X. combines majestic aerial shots of the hills and skylines with grittier footage shot on the streets of Hollywood to construct a truthful reflection of the many disparate elements that comes together as the city of Los Angeles. Described by film scholar David James as “a disabused, skeptical rendering of the city’s grittier underside” which reveals “the noir realities behind the sunshine," Ziolkowski’s work marked a high point in the burgeoning L.A. avant-garde film scene of the 1970s.