Robert Kramer’s Day

 

‘Robert Kramer — who, according to Vincent Canby of the New York Times, “seems incapable of shooting a scene, framing a shot or catching a line of dialogue that isn’t loaded with levels of information one usually finds only in the best, most spare poetry” — died unexpectedly in France this past November at the age of sixty.

‘He left a singular body of work—as far from Hollywood as it was from underground or experimental films—that eventually, he felt, would “make up one long film . . . one ‘story’ in a continual process of becoming.” A committed leftist who emerged radicalized from his studies in philosophy and Western European history at Swarthmore and Stanford, he worked as a reporter in Latin America and organized a community project in a black neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, before founding the Newsreel movement, an underground media collective which made some sixty documentaries and short films about radical political subjects and the antiwar movement between 1967 and 1971. Kramer made his mark in the 1960s as the great filmmaker of the American radical left with films like The Edge and Ice.

‘Embraced by the European intelligentsia, he eventually moved to Paris in the early 1980s, where he continued to produce fictionalized and documentary films on a range of subjects from Portugal’s April Revolution and post-independence Angola to the Tour de France—all the while maintaining his “uninterrupted dialogue with America.” Our series offers the opportunity to sample a range of Kramer’s rarely screened work and to pay tribute to this unique cinematic personality.’ — Harvard Film Archive

‘Born in New York, the son of a doctor, Kramer studied philosophy and western European history at Swarthmore College and Stanford University. After working on a community project among blacks in Newark, New Jersey, in 1965, he helped found the Newsreel Movement, which made some 60 documentaries and short films on political subjects between 1967 and 1971 when the anti-Vietnam war movement was growing.

‘During the same period, Kramer continued his critique of society with features that trod the boundary between fiction and documentary, shooting in 16mm with non-professional actors. In The Country (1967) focused on one man’s doubts about his fight against the US political system, and The Edge (1968) dealt with an assassination attempt on a war-mongering president.

‘Because of their length, subject matter and uncompromising cinema verité style, Kramer’s films were admired more than liked, and were not easy to release. Nevertheless, two highly personal films on being an exile were released in the US: Doc’s Kingdom (1987), a sombre reflection on a burnt-out American radical living in Portugal, who dreams of returning home, and Route One USA (1989), a road movie about a leftwing exile’s return to his native land.

‘Back in France, Kramer lectured on cinema and made films. Walk The Walk (1996) was a meditation on the state of Europe as seen through the eyes of a family man, who abandons everything to travel to Russia and onwards.

‘Kramer believed in working with the smallest crews possible. “I had a couple of experiences with full professional crews of 60-75 people, which I found extremely painful and uninteresting. It puts me in the position of military commander. There’s not much need for all those people. Even with really complicated things… For Walk The Walk, it was five people – camera (me); a sound person, a sound assistant; a camera assistant for me; and someone who does the lighting.”

‘Last year, the good-looking and affable Kramer appeared as an American in Paris in Cedric Kahn’s Ennui, and was planning further films, still sticking to his idealistic and minimalist principles.’ — The Guardian

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Robert Kramer Website
Robert Kramer @ IMDb
Robert Kramer, a Director Of Films With a Political Edge
The Lived Cinema of Robert Kramer: Politics and Subjectivity
Robert Kramer and the Jewish-German Question
Robert Kramer @ Filmmakers Cooperative
Melissa Anderson on Robert Kramer’s Milestones
INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT KRAMER
Robert Kramer’s Reports from the Road
Figures of Dissent: Robert Kramer
Hommage à Robert Kramer
ROBERT KRAMER, POINT DE DÉPART / STARTING PLACE
Aller, revenir, tisser un abri : Route One/USA, de Robert Kramer
Robert Kramer @ film-documentaire.fr
Repérage sur un film à faire avec Robert Kramer
L’à-venir
Robert Kramer : La piste kramer
Entre esprit de résistance et désir d’utopies, Robert Kramer a largué les amarres

 

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Extras

LOOKING FOR ROBERT (Trailer)

da “Conversazioni con Robert Kramer” di Alberto Signetto

Excerpts: Robert Kramer’s ‘Scenes from the Class Struggles in Portugal’

 

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Interview
from Jump Cut

 

ROBERT KRAMER: I went to Portugal this last time because MILESTONES was invited to the National Film Festival. At the time I felt uncomfortable about bringing MILESTONES to Portugal. I didn’t really understand what relationship it had to the struggle there … But I went because we were doing solidarity work here, and it seemed like it would be valuable to go back again.

I was really surprised by the response at the festival. MILESTONES won the first prize, sharing it with THE PRINCIPAL ENEMY by Sanjinés. I was surprised by the way the people there—a fairly broad class spectrum of people—were able to get into certain aspects of what they considered the cultural revolution. This meant not only the question of the role and relationship of women, but also a lot of questions about the internal relationships of groups of people. This even meant a certain way of formulating the political question as a central part of daily life.

At the time, it surprised me that they responded to MILESTONES in that way. But the longer I stayed in Portugal, the more I understood something of where they were coming from. At the same time, because I was feeling rather guilty and sheepish about dragging MILESTONES over there, I brought some films from the Newsreel period. I brought PEOPLE’S WAR (shot in North Vietnam), SUMMER ‘68 (about U.S. political activity during that time), and TO OUR COMMON VICTORY (an agitational film made to organize support for the Mayday demonstration). I showed those films at the festival too. They won the Jury Award for Newsreel. (Newsreel, as you probably know, is alive and well in New York City. They have a number of films in production, and one community theater showing excellent militant movies. I think they are about to open two more theaters and expand their work in general.)

There was a really strong feeling of what was new in those films for the Portuguese. In a nutshell, it was the idea that a film could try to contain the same energy that was in the events themselves. Portuguese filmmaking is dominated by the interview technique, largely because most of the Portuguese filmmakers live off of state television. So there is very little of the kind of energy that came out of the whole cinema verite explosion.

The other aspect that was new to the Portuguese was the absence of separation between the people who made the films and the struggles themselves. Whatever the nature of the struggles, and whatever the limits of them, the people who made the film believed in them and were in the midst of them.

The Portuguese cultural workers in general, but especially the filmmakers, have many aspects of a colonized group. They look out of the country a great deal for models—to France and elsewhere in Europe. A great majority of them seem to be moving to the Right, whether they want to or not. The only categories of judgment they have are traditional ones about a kind of quality, a kind of distance from the material that allows you to judge it, and place it, and put a frame around it. It’s an attitude about what making art is that really doesn’t allow them to leap in the middle of it and make films that try to serve the people, allowing the very framework of the film to be educated by the relationships between filmmakers and the people.

THOMAS BROM: So how did you come to make the film on the Portuguese revolution?

KRAMER: After the festival, I went back to Lisbon. There, Phillip Spinelli and I got steady pressure to stay, invitations for us to stay. We decided to stay and work together on this film. There was really selfless and generous support and cooperation on the part of a wide range of different filmmakers and political organizations. No one could solve the whole problem of how to make a film, but each one would offer a camera, or contacts to get television footage. In a lot of ways, the prize was the key.

At different times, we finally were able to use three different cameras—one from the film school, one from someone else, and we had a Bolex. We got a lot of raw stock from state television, in exchange for their rights to screen the film when it was finished. But there was no real prior discussion about what we intended to do.

BROM: Were you working with political parties at the time?

KRAMER: I have a close working relationship with the PRP—the Proletarian Revolutionary Party. It’s sort of friendship and politics blended. In terms of energy and work and line, I was very attracted to them. So they not only offered a lot of encouragement, but they also made it very clear it wasn’t their film in any sense. It was an ideal situation.

BRON: What relationship do you see between your experience filming, and your previous films?

KRAMER: This was really an important event for me. Most of the filmmakers around me were trying to get into documentary films and have the control over them that you have over a fiction film. That is, to develop a way of working with verite so you could actually compose a film that had the same depth and ability to move between different parts that a fiction film has.

But I was always trying to take fiction films and make them feel like documentaries. I hadn’t really been attracted to documenting struggles directly.

This time it felt wonderful to document a mass revolutionary struggle. There was virtually no difference in the way we worked on the Portugal film and MILESTONES. We would get a body of material and then begin to think what needed to be there to fill it out. We’d look for a strand, and then follow it up with subsequent filming. Only the reality was that much more vibrant as it erupted around us. The disruptions that would constantly alter the direction of our work felt good, forcing us to include them in the scope of the film.

The main thing that I learned in Portugal is what it means for the left to be marginalized. It makes me wonder why we’ve done as well as we have. People are fed by a mass struggle. A mass struggle is like life blood. You can actually see the difference between a group of people who’ve been sitting in an office all day in Lisbon—doing necessary but bureaucratic political work for the Party, let’s say—and people who’ve just come back from a successful struggle of a tenant’s commission. It’s really like one person looks healthy and is standing up straight and has a positive perspective on what’s happening, and the other person is sort of dragging around and has a lot of negative criticism.

My films, more than probably any others, reflect that marginalization. I feel good about having made them, because I think that’s an honest reflection of reality. But it doesn’t seem like that has to be done any more. Our project now is to somehow change that condition.

It’s really a whole different thing in Portugal. Even the smallest left parties have a direct connection to the people. For example, you walk into a party office and you see a lot of people who you think are just petty bourgeois students—they’re just like us. Then you discover that these people are from villages from all over the country. Their style of dress has changed after three years in Lisbon, but their social reality is still that countryside. They can go back there and talk to people. It makes you realize how great the class separations are in America, and what an enormous struggle it’s going to take to overcome that.

BROM: Have you thought ahead to whom you want to reach with the film, and who’s going to distribute it?

KRAMER: No, I haven’t thought about those questions. The film really needs to be made for a non-left audience—a broad American audience. That’s another reason we chose not to deal with the party struggle. At the time, we thought of those as a series of left questions that were not of interest to a broad audience—I’m not sure if that’s true now.

I think the heart of the way to make that broad film is to show the concrete basis for the demands for socialism. In some ways, I think that’s the only thing that we can do. We can argue this line or that line. But the primary thing is to find a way to demonstrate that people’s real daily oppression produces their resistance, and then struggle to change that. It’s not something mysterious or something caused by Communist ideology. Marxism-Leninism only describes it, and suggests some ways to aid it. But the primary thing is the struggle to change the social reality. The strategy of the film is to show basically that, and find subtle ways to draw the parallels here.

 

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14 of Robert Kramer’s 42 films

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In the Country (1967)
‘During the Vietnam War, a young revolutionary, isolated with his lover in a country house, struggles to comprehend his self-inflicted inactivity and his alienation from former political associates.’ — letterboxd

Watch the trailer here

 

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The Edge (1968)
‘A troubled antiwar activist plans to assassinate the President of the United States. His resolve forces others in a fragmented and disillusioned group of political allies to face the threat of government counterintelligence and the temptations of middle-age security, and to reexamine their commitment to radical action.’ — Laurence Kardish, Museum of Modern Art

Trailer

 

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Ice (1970)
‘ICE to me is the most original and most significant American narrative film in two, maybe three years. I like this slow, measured flow, which is mysterious. unpredictable, full of dark corners. It is far from the usual melodrama. I like its movements, its people, its mood. The film probes in depth the most urgent contemporary realities. Robert Kramer is a filmmaker of the first magnitude.’ — Jonas Mekas

Trailer

Excerpt

Watch the film here

 

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w/ John Douglas Milestones (1975)
‘MILESTONES is a lilting, free-associative masterpiece that follows dozens of characters—including hippies, farmers, immigrants, Native Americans, and political activists—as they try to reconcile their ideals with the realities of life in America. In casual, intimate discussions of subjects ranging from communal living to parenting, from pregnancy to family, from Vietnam to Cuba, from life in the country to life in the city, and from fulfillment in the workplace to sexual fulfillment, the film’s diverse protagonists explain their beliefs and work to negotiate jealousies, relationships, and the logistical challenges of their rapidly changing world.’ — Icarus Films

Excerpt

Excerpt

Watch the film here

 

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As Fast As You Can (1982)
‘A young couple who are amateur roller-skating buffs practice their chosen avocation at a Parisian roller rink. Their hopes rise with a chance to go to Chicago to compete, especially when a magazine reporter assures them that his company will back them – but then lets them know some sex-related business is a part of the package. Caught up in the couple’s drama are several other characters who look like they might need some help themselves, making the problem of how to get to the Windy City seem more and more insoluble.’ — Letterboxd

Watch the film here

 

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Our Nazi (1984)
‘The son of a famous Nazi filmmaker shoots a movie and meets the former city commander of Vilna, a man who ordered the killing of many thousands of people. The film is a documentary made during the shooting of Thomas Harlan’s Wundkanal (1985)’. — IMDb

Excerpt

 

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Diesel (1985)
‘What happens with Diesel? Kramer fails where he should have succeeded (on the side of the spectacle, of business) and he succeeds a bit where he has never failed (on the side of cinematographic writing). His characters are badly drawn out, blurry, and not storyboarded; they don’t become types, let alone myths. But Kramer only ever took interest in the opposite: not the characters, one by one, but in what links them all. He’s interested in the link, not the linked ones. In this sense he is a modern filmmaker, i.e. not very American (he admires Resnais). He’s American in the sense that for him the link is tribal and never erotic or psychological. Kramer may have changed, moved, lived and worked in France, he knows what a tribe is, this mix of paranoid fascination and group narcissism. He knows it like any other American, from Ford to Cimino.’ — Serge Daney

Trailer

the entire film

 

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Doc’s Kingdom (1988)
‘Doc lives on the edge of Europe where it imperceptibly slides over into the Third World. As a doctor, he knows that the illness he has contracted ten years before in war-torn Africa is getting worse. The diagnosis is cholera, but Doc Knows the disease’s real name: despair. His thoughts about his failed struggle for justice and ideals are drowned regularly in alcohol. On the other side of the world lives Jimmy, a speed-loving motorbike freak who, when his mother dies, finds a letter from Doc and discovers that his father, whom he thought was dead, is still alive. The encounter of the two men leads to a reappraisal of two worlds in opposition.’ — Daniel Yates

Trailer

the entire film

 

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Route One USA (1989)
‘In the domain between documentary and fiction which interests us, ROUTE ONE USA has already become legendary. Its maker, Robert Kramer, who has plotted his route with sturdy perseverance first in America, then in Europe, personifies the political struggle by his and my generation, from Vietnam till today. In Kramer’s early films, there is some hard and violent thinking, but in ROUTE ONE USA that severe tension of thought has made room for a relaxed mise en scène of movement, with the camera in the midst of the ever-changing characters (fleeting characters in brief ‘sketches’, but still always just characters). The mise en scène could be regarded as conventional fiction, but along the way the convention is put in startling perspectives. Sometimes we suddenly see intensely divergent angles from far away or from above. We are sailing and flying nicely, we see light and we effortlessly hold out with Robert Kramer for four and a half hours. That he is our travelling companion, no one will doubt.’ — Johan van der Keuken

Trailer

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Sous le vent (1991)
‘SOUS LE VENT drifts along with the waves of the Seine. Like the Allies almost fifty years earlier, Kramer lands on the coast of Normandy and continues upriver towards Paris, stopping at cinema locations and talking with cinema people like Serge Daney.’ — Viennale

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Berlin 10-90 (1991)
‘In response to a command, Kramer dwells on the paths of the “psychologizing” object. In search of his own identity, of his otherness, of what allows him to emit a film by saying “I”, he adds a cinematographic exercise not without theoretical meaning. By diverting the constraints, Kramer makes of a sequence shot a work elaborate although experimental, universal although intimate, fragmented although linear. He is constantly aiming for counterpoint and swinging Berlin 10/90 between opposite shores. Destined for television, it is indeed auteur cinema that his film raises as much by its originality as by its stubbornness to say “I” at the same time as “I am another”, to appeal to the spectatorial scripting for to serve what is a most intimate work. With regard to history, Berlin 10/90 becomes a revelator of our own history, through that of Kramer. The pre-mounted film is the place of memory and reflection, where make sense the words of the filmmaker. Materializing the burgeoning, disordered and paradoxical state of the author’s mind, Berlin 10/90 idealizes and magnifies the aesthetics of inner conflict.’ — Objectif Cinema

Watch the film here

 

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Starting Place (1994)
‘In 1969, Robert Kramer went to Hanoi in Vietnam and brought back 40 minutes in black and white entitled “The People’s War”. Twenty-three years later, he returned, camera on his shoulder, eager to see, meet, and understand the Vietnam of the 1990s. The filmmaker established the first dialogue with his guide from 1969. It is about translating books (Reed, Cervantes!), and about tastes for powerful texts (“The Last Days That Shook the World”, “Don Quixote”!). From then on, the film will never stop searching for its marks and continually changing them, fascinated by the daily life that it captures in a stunning way, outside of all established frameworks. A true visual score, like a blues with restrained accents, it mixes the past and the present, explores memories, and evokes hopes.’ — Dimmitri Kroitor

Watch the film here

 

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Walk the Walk (1996)
‘The story of several trips, that of Raye, a young girl who leaves the family home for one or other European countries, that of her father, Abel, former athlete and finally that of Nellie, his wife, who does not not but travel among the micro-organisms that she studies with her microscope.’ — R. Kramer

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Ghosts of Electricity (1997)
‘One of Kramer’s final films was this short commissioned by the Locarno Film Festival for its 50th anniversary. Ghosts of Electricity imagines a world in which both the cinema and the sciences share a humanist interest in the bettering of our lives.’ — Letterboxd

Watch the film here

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Hi. Noise is a precious resource. The increased volume doesn’t change that, I don’t think? Nice about the reading. That’s what readings should do, so, awesome. Hoping to book the trip today, I hope. ** _Black_Acrylic, I’m like you, but I’m also fond of what little has caught my ear. I assume Irvine is the vocalist on the audio novel? I’ve still never ‘read’ a book that way. I feel like I need to see the text to absorb it properly. ** jay, Hi. I too have so much to learn about country music. I’m waiting for it to obsess me. You’re even finding lost cash. You’re becoming a borderline Jesus kind of figure for the brainy set. Seriously. No, I don’t know that animated horror film. I’ll see what I can find. I can’t even imagine what a disturbing animated horror could be. Interesting. Thanks! ‘Summer Hikaru Died’ is still on my agenda. I’ll bump it up. I hope it’s as nice out there as it is here. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Ooh, Monday! I can read it on my plane flight. Yes, for me too, the prospect of being ‘massaged’ by a stranger is the opposite of relaxing. Massaging a stranger, well, that’s another matter, haha. I’m pretty sure we’ll fly to Chicago on the 16th then on to Toronto and then fly back to Paris on the 26th. I think. A glad love is a good love. Love wondering what the apparently huge national strike in France tomorrow is going to look like, G. ** James, Hey. Man, so sorry about the health stuff you’re dealing with. And the manuscripts too. I am writing Zac’s and my next film, but the film stuff I mention is mostly Zac and me trying to give ‘Room Temperature’ the best life we can, meaning constant hunting for screening possibilities and organising the ones that happen, which is pretty much 90% of my life at the moment. Take care. ** Bill, Hi. Chris is to some big degree involved in the online zine X-R-A-Y, and I’m not entirely sure what else he’s up to. Fun is good news, so cool. Where are you going this time? I’ll be splitting Paris next week for a while. Chicago, Toronto. ** Mari, Hi, Mari. I’ll listen to your favorite country song. If I had one, I’ll link you up in return. ‘Til soon, I hope. ** Minet, Hi! How cool to see you! I’ve been mostly good, a little overly busy but ok. Instagram seems useful. I scroll/hunt and share. I don’t like that posting links there doesn’t turn them into working links. And I don’t like that it doesn’t allow gifs in the posts. But otherwise it’s more fun than Facebook. Congrats on your new book! Is it already out? How is that going? Very nice! Wow, sure, I’d be happy and honored to do the interview. That would be great. Thank you, my friend. How do you want to do it? I’m game for whatever you want. I’ll be here in Paris for a week and then I’ll be traveling in the States/Canada showing the film, and I won’t be able to do it during that, so for about 10 days or so. Or I’ll be back home on probably the 27th and I could do it after that. What’s best? Let me know. Thanks! It will be a big pleasure! xo, me. ** Dan Carroll, That sounds like a success to me. Most of the country music I know is older. I do have a fondness for country songs where the songwriter takes some clichéd phrase and builds a song around it and then the singer fills it with emotion. Like ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’, ‘I Walk the Line’, ‘Take That Job and Shove It’, ‘Here’s a Quarter (Finds Someone Who Cares’, etc. etc. Some of those songs seem kind of brilliant in their own way. If there’s a French country scene, I certainly don’t know it. I don’t think it’s a thing here. Country artists never tour over here, for example. ** Steeqhen, Happy the post reached out. Cool about your friend’s band. This is a very unpopular opinion, but I cannot stand Joni Mitchell. I think she’s dreadful. Cue the brickbats, haha. Happy to read the paragraphs and if they did double duty with your nerves, bonus. ** Sarah, Hi! I’m ok, a little overworked and a bit stressed, but such is occasional life. Whoa, so great about your book! How can I find it? I hope the birth goes really well. Big congratulations! I really look forward to reading it. I love ‘Mumbo Jumbo’. Ishmael Reed’s first few books are great. ‘The Freelance Pallbearers’ is really good too. Enjoy everything! ** Nicholas., I waited until my 40s to give my body its due, but I guess you can’t start too soon. Up? Overly busy, dinner was pasta, and I very, very rarely order in. I can’t even remember the last time. ** Scott Mcclanahan, Scott! Maestro! Thank you kindly, or, well, Chris would thank you kindly if he knew. I’m so excited for your new book! Mega-respect, sir. ** Carsten, I do try. I only know the 60s psychedelic-ish Terry Reid. ‘Superlungs’, etc. If you watch the footage of Bresson being booed, he wears a sly smile. ** Hugo, Hi, H. On the front cover of ‘Tiger Beat’? That’s Leif Garrett. It wasn’t my first collection, but it was the first one that wasn’t awful. Major day and then week to you! ** HaRpEr //, Hi. I ended up having something that I had to do last evening, so I missed the ‘La Tour de glace’ screening, but it opens here in about a month. Paris is highly visitable. Hopefully we’ll figure out a place/way to show ‘RT’ in London and that’ll get me over there. It was a really different time back then. Experimentation in books, music, movies was the height of coolness. Kids carried around Barth or Pynchon or Burroughs or whoever’s books that they never intended to read. Strange to think that happened now. New Directions still publishes at least somewhat experimental fiction sometimes. Grove only reprints their past experimental books once in a while. There were some really good country-leaning sock bands in the 90s era. Silver Jews, yes, Long Ryders, Uncle Tupelo, Lucinda Williams of course, Palace Brothers, Geraldine Fibbers, … ** Darby🐋, Hi! Elvis did some country for sure. I think I go to Chicago a week from today and then onto Canada at some point. Yes, a bit nervous about the timing on my Chicago visit. We’ll see. Oh, I think the Eraserhead baby looks great! I forget what material you used, but I like its skin. Yeah, it’s a triumph. There’s no one right way to make art or write, or I mean there’s no correct attitude to have when doing it. You don’t have to give 100% of your brain or energy, I mean. Sometimes art or writing happens wonderfully without your control. Animatronics will probably be the first post I launch when the blog restarts after my US get-away. ** Dev, Hi. Country remains a mostly frontier to me. I’ve never known anyone who was especially into it, so I have no natural entree. Right, Drive By Truckers, nice. I went to see Neil Young recently, as I think I mentioned, and it was the first time in decades where I wasn’t old enough to be the grandfather of the other attendees. Being in a concert hall full of people my age-ish was kind of spooky. I will give Geoffrey Hill a shot. I mostly read for style and structure and stuff, so what a work is about or where it’s coming from doesn’t matter so much. ** Steve, Hi. Interesting about country’s presence in Canada. I wonder what that’s about. You never hear it over here, or I never have. Definitely nervous about what kind of Chicago we’ll be landing in. ** julian, Hi, j. Yeah, me too, pretty concerned about what’s imminent for Chicago. If it’s like it was in LA, I wouldn’t be shocked if the film festival gets cancelled. But hopefully it won’t come to that. What absolute fucking insanity we’re living through. ** Uday, Thanks. The readership of this blog just seems to keep growing, so maybe your professor’s recommendation is having some effect. The perennial problem indeed. A fine, what is it, Tuesday to you! ** Okay. Today you have the opportunity to get to know the very worthy films of Robert Kramer if you don’t already know them. See you tomorrow.