Starting Places: A Conversation with Robert Kramer

In summer 1997, French film critic and historian Bernard Eisenschitz met with Robert Kramer three times to speak in detail about Kramer’s life and work, covering thirty years of filmmaking. The exchange between friends starts with his early, activist years and his involvement with the Newsreel Collective, considers essential films like Ice (1969) and Milestones (1975), and traces Kramer’s orientation towards Europe and relocation to France in the late 1970s. Going back and forth between Europe, the USA, Portugal, and Vietnam, Kramer was consistently able to work and make films like Doc’s Kingdom (1987), Route One/USA (1989), and Starting Place (1993). He passed away in 1999.

The conversation was published in French in 2001 as Points de départ. More than 20 years later, Starting Places: A Conversation with Robert Kramer makes this illuminating account of a ＂mid-Atlantic＂ filmmaker available in its original language for the first time. The book is complemented by three of Kramer’s essays from the 1980s and 1990s and an updated bibliography and filmography.

Volker Pantenburg (Author, Edited by, Foreword by)
Volker Pantenburg is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Zurich. His most recent book is Aggregatzustände bewegter Bilder (2022). Book publications in English include Farocki/Godard: Film as Theory (2015), Cinematographic Objects: Things and Operations (2015, Editor) and Screen Dynamics: Mapping the Borders of Cinema (Co-Editor, 2012). In 2015, he co-founded the Harun Farocki Institut Berlin.

Bernard Eisenschitz (Author)
Bernard Eisenschitz is a French film critic, subtitler and historian based in Paris. He was a critic at Cahiers du cinéma and La Nouvelle Critique, and edited the journal Cinéma between 2001 and 2007. His books includeNicholas Ray: An American Journey (1990), Le cinéma allemand (1999), Fritz Lang au Travail (2011), Douglas Sirk, né Detlef Sierck (2022), and Boris Vassilievitch Barnet (2024).

Roberto Turigliatto (Author)
Roberto Turigliatto is former head of programming at the National Museum of Cinema in Turin and former director of Torino Film Festival. He collaborated with the Venice, Pesaro, Rotterdam and Locarno festivals and is co-director of the Fuori Orario program (RAI 3). He has published major collective works on new cinemas and books on Philippe Garrel, Jerzy Skolimowski, Jean-Daniel Pollet, Manoel de Oliveira, Julio Bressane, and others.