IN THE COUNTRY (US, 1966, Robert Kramer)

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IN THE COUNTRY (US, 1966, Robert Kramer)

In the United States in 1966, Robert Kramer directed his first feature film, IN THE COUNTRY, outside all existing production systems and with the political fellow travelers who had just filmed him in the documentary TROUBLEMAKERS. IN THE COUNTRY shows what is left out of TROUBLEMAKERS: the documentary shows actions (community organizing, militant activism) that the fictional film keeps outside the frame in order to focus on a relationship crisis in which the man fails to put aside, for a few days, his obsessive political activism.

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THE EDGE / ICE (US, 1967/1969, Robert Kramer)

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THE EDGE / ICE (US, 1967/1969, Robert Kramer)

THE EDGE (1967) and ICE (1969) form a definitive diptych on the temptations of terrorism and insurrection: a man wants to assassinate the President of the United States (THE EDGE); revolutionary groups launch a major armed offensive against the ruling regime (ICE). However, both fictions are less interested in the impact of activism than in the moral state of shock that gradually shifts relationships and beliefs as it overlays another sense of time and other types of logic on those of revolutionary efficiency. Made in parallel with Robert Kramer’s own militant activism in Newsreel and other organizations of the American left, which they contradict dialectically, they are an extraordinary application of filmmaking considered as a tool of thought in motion.

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3 JOURNEYS TO LITHUANIA (Jonas Mekas, Adlolfas Mekas, Pola Chapelle)

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3 JOURNEYS TO LITHUANIA (Jonas Mekas, Adlolfas Mekas, Pola Chapelle)

Adolfas and Jonas Mekas arrived in New York in 1949, leaving their native land, Lithuania, behind, caught between Nazi and Soviet occupation. Little by little the camera became their means of expression and cinema invaded their lives. 27 years passed before they could finally return to Lithuania. This is the odyssey the three films intertwiningly recall: Adolfas and Jonas Mekas and Pola Chapelle (Adolfas'ʼwife) are at once actor and filmer. The Mekas brothers rediscover their country and family with their changes, while Pola Chapelle is the external gaze embracing this reunion. Neither Lithuanian nor New Yorkers, where is their home now? As Jonas likes to say “My Country is Cinema.”

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