Robert Kramer : Notes de la forteresse (1967-1999)

Notes de la forteresse (1967-1999)
Edited and presented by Cyril Béghin | Texts translated from English by Cécile Wajsbrot and Cyril Béghin

Robert Kramer wrote extensively, before, during, after making his films in "notes" and project sketches, fictions and essays, countless intimate notebooks and files composed of fragments, as well as texts that have long awaited publication. This considerable material is one of the hidden foundations of his work, where he negotiated more explicitly than in his films his relationship to political subjectification, auto-biographical fiction or intertwining documentary, propaganda and fantasy.

Robert Kramer's cinematographic work is gaining international recognition. It is accompanied by a large body of preparatory texts, letters, notes and scripts now kept in France by the IMEC (Institute of Contemporary Edition).

The present book project was originally conceived during the author's lifetime, in friendly complicity with the film historian Bernard Eisenschitz. The sudden disappearance of Robert Kramer in 1999 and various editorial failures have hindered its publication until today.

The texts of Robert Kramer reveal the figure of a filmmaker with a keen awareness of history and social injustices, whose engagement in the political struggles of his time is inseparable from his films. He invented new forms of cinematographic expression, combining collective experience and certain biographical aspects to produce forms of documentary fiction whose innovative aspect is far from exhausted.
The texts gathered here are those which maintain the closest link with his films (executed or not). Written before, during, or after the shooting or the release of a film, they shed a precious light on the political and artistic engagement (the two being inseparable in his eyes), on his methods and provide instructions on how to understand his work.

Robert Kramer (1939-1999) is an American filmmaker who moved to Europe in the early 1980s. He is the co-founder of the alternative newsreel film agency, created in 1967 in the United States, and is still active today, whose objective was to produce information from images in opposition to the dominant media. He is the author of twenty-five films mostly made while living in France.

ISBN : 979-10-92616-27-9
EAN : 9791092616279