By Larry Bensky
Update:
Robert Kramer Screenings In Cambridge, New York.
A week-long showing of Robert Kramer films begins Friday, January 7 at the
Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge. For films and times, see http://harvardfilmarchive.org/janfeb2000/cal-01-00.html
There will be a similar showing of Kramer films in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, February 5-12.
When American filmmaker Robert Kramer died suddenly in France this November, his 31st film almost completed, there was an outpouring of shock and sadness around the world. Kramer had lived in France for 20 years, having left the United States in frustration at his inability to get his work funded and distributed in the States.
Yet there was more to Kramer's career than frustration at a lack of creative outlet; there was a deep political disappointment as well. Robert Kramer's vision and accomplishment was as pure an expression of 60's hope, energy, and productivity as that decade has left us. That most people in his field—in his native country, for that matter—had either never heard of him or were only vaguely familiar with his work is a measure of the obstacles he encountered his whole life. As Media Channel Senior Editor Larry Bensky points out, Kramer would have been among the first to appreciate the irony that only after his death has there been a concerted effort to distribute and properly commemorate his life's work.
There was never going to be a "good" time for my 60-year-old filmmaker friend, Robert Kramer, to die suddenly. Yet as the sadness and shock at his untimely passing begins to wear off and a little emotional distance becomes possible, it seems apparent that now was a particularly unfortunate time for the world to have lost his insights and his talent.
Scene from "Ghosts of Electricity" (1997). |
Robert, whose Newsreel crew was the first alternative media group in the '60s to haul then newly portable but still cumbersome film equipment through conflict-torn streets, should have lived to see his spiritual video heirs in action, helping build a movement in the tear-gas mists of Seattle. Robert, whose battle to get his 31 films shown in his native country was a lifelong frustration, should have lived to see the imminent moment when the Internet will finally give his works the distribution they deserve, and help confirm and expand his reputation.
Robert should have lived to help his 25-year-old daughter, Keja, complete his final film, which she’s now doing. He needed to be here to help his partner, Erika, sort through the mush of rights, permissions, and offers that have suddenly emerged. He should have attended the numerous retrospectives of his work now being planned in cities such as Paris, San Francisco, and New York, where a showing of Kramer's films is planned for March 2-9 at the Pioneer Theater (for more information, visit www.onelist.com/community/KramerSupport. He should have been able to elaborate in public on the things he said so well in "Snap Shots," a celebration of his films mentioned on the Web site Artvt.com. In his contribution to this book-in-progress, Kramer wrote: "Movies are the means by which one packs one’s bag and walks away from everything that the room and habit and society and family represent. And then the movies are also like signposts, markers, milestones. They indicate that a life passed by there, that this is the sense that could be made of the experience, that the movie is a measure of the profitability of the experience, its intrinsic usefulness, and that in principle there is something here that is worth sharing together."
Most of all, Robert should be writing these words, not me. Because if there ever was a media worker who exercised constant, introspective vigilance over himself and his output, and knew how to express the (necessarily tentative) conclusions of that process, it was Robert.
As to who he was, and what films he made, the essential details are available at www.artvt.com/p_rkramerbio.htm. Those with little or no experience of Robert and his work should click on the site's "Snap Shots" section to read more. And then be prepared to attend, online or in person, the multi-city exposition of his works mentioned earlier. And then be prepared to contemplate, if not answer definitively, the questions Robert kept asking, and asked again in "Snap Shots":
What is the best way to live together?
What do I need?
What do you want?
What part is "human nature" and what part is our free choice?
How much can I give up before I lose "I?"
How can we go there?
- Larry Bensky is Senior Editor of the Media Channel.
