Sous le vent (Leeward)/ Ghosts of Electricity

Book presentation and film programme
Sous le vent (Leeward)
Robert Kramer, FR 1991
Screenplay, Director of Photography: Robert Kramer; Editing: Elisabeth Juste, Robert Kramer; with: Geneviève Troussier, Serge Daney, Philippe Tavernier, Michel Choquet, Nicole Belguise. DCP, colour, 31 min. French with English subtitles

Ghosts of Electricity*
Robert Kramer, CH 1997
Screenplay, editor: Robert Kramer; cinematographer: Robert Kramer, Richard Copans. 35mm, colour, 19 min. English with French subtitles

‘Points de départ’, a multi-part conversation between Robert Kramer and Bernard Eisenschitz, was published in French in 2001. Supplemented by three essays by Kramer, it is now being published in the original English language for the Viennale Film Museum retrospective under the title Starting Places. Eisenschitz and editor Volker Pantenburg present the book, framed by two short films by Robert Kramer on the past and future of cinema: Sous le vent was commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture. The film allows itself - its images, sounds and thoughts - to drift with the waves of the Seine. Like the Allies almost 50 years earlier, Kramer lands on the coast of Normandy and moves upstream towards Paris, along cinema locations and in dialogue with cinema people such as Serge Daney. Ghosts of Electricity also shows Kramer's desire to interpret commissioned works - ‘commandes’ - as work assignments to himself. For the 50th anniversary of the Locarno Film Festival, he creates a dystopian/utopian vision of the cinema of tomorrow. (Volker Pantenburg)

In the presence of Bernard Eisenschitz and Volker Pantenburg

* Courtesy Cinémathèque suisse

Photo: Austrian Film Museum