Route One/USA - Robert Kramer

Shot over five months in 1987 and 1988 from north to south along the East Coast, Route One / USA (1989) offers a broad geographical cross-section of a precise time in United States history, and a wistful journey through a country that Robert Kramer, as an America, had never looked at so carefully. In the company of his fictional alter-ego, Doc, the doctor, the filmmaker observes people and landscapes with the care and concern of a traveling doctor. Route One / USA is also a magnificent combination, to the sound of Barre Philips' music, of a filming method that Kramer had developed a few weeks earlier in the lesser-known X-Country (1987) and an editing technique that he would perfect the following year in the video-letter Dear Doc (1990).

“Route One / USA stems from a very deliberate choice to return to the scene of the crime. The interesting thing about this film - as different as it is from Milestones, even in the way it was shot - is that in Milestones we were able to go all over the country without ever talking to anyone who was not from our crew. Route One / USA was the exact opposite: we were just there to talk, to listen and to learn.” (Robert Kramer)