The Coat
Le manteau
1996 / France / French / Color / 72 min / Video
Script, Photography: Robert Kramer
Editing: Remi Hiernaux
Music: Barre Phillips
Sound: Corinne Gigon
Lighting: Daniel Benkimoun
Cast: Jean-Quentin Chatelain, Clementine Yelnik, Juan Huerta, and others
Producers: Claude Guisard, Sylvie Blum
Production Companies: La Sept Arte, INA
Source: INA
After a filmmaker-narrator’s wife dies, he creates a television program with an archeologist presenting their search for an ancient mantle that was woven in Peru many years before the colonial conquest. From Latin America to Berlin, the film follows the traces of a line that runs across time and sinks deeply in the “heart of darkness” of the West. The digital video camera, operated by Kramer, simulates the point of view of the filmmaker, played by the director himself.
“The real story of The Coat is about filmmaking. This has been my experience of making all my movies, that there is very little separation between filmmaking and the living. Usually, filmmaking is apparently an occupation of people, then somewhere their life is over there. I really wanted to break down this distinction a lot, between living and filming.”
—Robert Kramer, Tokyo, 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 |