Guns
1980 / France / English / Color / 95 min / 16mm
Script: Robert Kramer
Photography: Louis Bihi, Richard Copans, Claude Michaud, Eric Pittard
Editing: Valeria Sarmiento, Claudio Martinez, Yann Dedet, Monique Soussan
Music: Barre Phillips
Sound: Olivier Schwob, Jean Umansky, Dominique Vieillard
Continuity: Barbara Constantine
Producer: Helene Vager, Quasar
Cast: Patrick Bauchau, Juliet Berto, Peggy Franckston, and others
“Every gun has many stories to tell,” writes Robin, the character played by Kramer. Tony, a foreign reporter with a political past who has lived in France for some time, tries to unveil the mysteries behind an obscure arms traffic in which the government is probably involved in. A shipment disappears in Marseilles. An arms dealer is assassinated, but Tony does not manage to get to the bottom of the investigation, which by now he experiences as a personal obsession. But the “political-police” story line intersects with the parallel line of the “private” stories—Tony’s girlfriend Lil, a swimming teacher whom he has left in Paris; Robin, an American artist who works illegally driving a truck; Margot, an actress who he visits at Marseilles where she is ministering to her mother’s last agonies; and Katrin, a friend who is fleeing from an unknown country where she was tortured and who is staying at Tony and Lil’s house. The stories crisscross, clash, and overlap, drifting and washing away, moving in a way that any certainty seems to fade away.
(Festival Cinema Giovani 1997)
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• Robert Kramer Retrospective | FALN | In the Country | The Edge | Ice | People’s War | Milestones | Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal | Guns | A Great Day in France / Birth | As Fast as You Can | Fear | Doc’s Kingdom | Route One / USA | Dear Doc | Berlin 10/90 | Video Letters: Robert Kramer and Stephen Dwoskin | Leeward | Point de départ / Starting Place | Walk the Walk | The Coat | Ghosts of Electricity | SayKomSa | Cities of the Plain | Against Forgetting |