Kirjahaku

Perhaps best known for Rebel without a Cause, American filmmaker Nicholas Ray directed dozens of movies in the film noir genre, including In a Lonely Place, Johnny Guitar, and They Live by Night. Born in Galesville, Wisconsin, in 1911, Ray was an iconoclastic figure in film-an alcoholic, depressive, and compulsive gambler-who found himself increasingly blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1960s only to be heralded as the spiritual father to American cinema’s New Wave and one of America’s greatest rebel auteurs. From Martin Scorsese to Jean-Luc Godard and Jim Jarmusch, Ray’s influence can be seen throughout the work of some of the twentieth century’s greatest directors. In this authoritative biography, Bernard Eisenschitz leaves no stone unturned.

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.