Route One/USA
1989 / France / English / Color / 255 min / 35mm
Photography: Robert Kramer
Editing: Guy Lecorne, Robert Kramer, Pierre Choukroun, Claire Laville, Keja Kramer
Music Composed and Performed by Barre Phillips, Pierre Favre, Michel Petrucciani, John Surman and Floris Nico Bunink
Sound: Olivier Schwob
Lighting, Producer: Richard Copans
Cast: Paul McIssac
Production Companies: Les Films d’Ici, La Sept
Source: Yamagata Documentary Film Library
“Route 1 is a highway that runs from Canada to Key West, Florida, along the east coast of the USA. In 1936, it was the most traveled roadway in the world. In 1988, it runs beside super highways and through suburbs, a thin stretch of asphalt cutting through all the old dreams of a nation. But as the Doctor and I went down that road for five months, I had the impression that we were not driving through the past at all, but through a much more honest and dynamic revelation of the present. We were in the shadows of highways and great glass downtown centers, we were far from the movie images, we seemed to be on the edge and slipping fast into obscurity, but we were really in the present, surrounded by big trouble and hard times.”
—Robert Kramer (YIDFF ’89)
|
• 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 |