Cités de la plaine (Cities of the Plain)
Robert Kramer, FR 2000Screenplay: Robert Kramer; Cinematography: Robert Kramer, Hervé Durand; Editing: Robert Kramer, Rémi Hiernaux; Music: Barre Phillips; Cast: Ben, Amélie Desrumaux, Bernard Tralet, Nathalie Sarles, Lahcene Aouiti, Erika Kramer. 35mm, color, 110 min. French with English subtitles*
Preceded by: City Empires
Robert Kramer, FR, 1998. With: Robert Kramer, Rem Koolhaas. DCP, color, 24 min
For a discussion with Rem Koolhaas at the Centre Pompidou entitled "Architecte et cinéaste" in April 1998, Kramer compiled scenes from Route One/USA (1989), Diesel (1985), À toute allure (1982), Berlin 10/90 (1991), Sous le vent (1991) and Ghosts of Electricity (1997). City Empires shows cities and spaces in their dialectic of freedom and imprisonment, architectures of today, yesterday and tomorrow. In the same year, Kramer began work on Cités de la plaine, his last film. An urban planner from EuraLille is part of the ensemble of characters, while the spaces, forms and times blur into a dense, dream-like fabric with seamless transitions between different places as well as the present and the past. A cinematic stream of consciousness structured as a series of flashbacks that are constantly reconfigured in the mind of Ben, the blind protagonist. From Kramer's notes: "The blind man is an old man in a black hole, and like a black hole, this place is of a tremendous density and is only illuminated by harsh streams of white light." (V.P.)
* Courtesy Cinémathèque française
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