Biography

Daughter Keja with wife Erika; older daughter Rain from previous marriage.

In 1980, NY Times movie critic called Kramer "one of the most exciting" directors then working, but found it "incredible" that he could find financing for his movies only in France.

Co-founder of the radical documentary group Newsreel.

To all filmmakers who accept the limited, socially determined rules of clarity of exposition, who think that films must use the accepted vocabulary to "convince," we say, essentially: "You only work, whatever your reasons, whatever your presumed 'content,' to support and bolster this society. You are part of the mechanisms which maintain stability through re-integration. Your films are helping to hold it all together. And, finally, whatever your other descriptions, you have already chosen sides. Dig: Your sense of order and form is already a political choice. Don't talk to me about 'content' - but if you do, I will tell you that you cannot encompass our 'content' with those legislated and approved senses, that you do not understand it if you treat it that way. There is no such thing as revolutionary content, revolutionary spirit laid out for inspection and sale on the bargain basement counter."

We want to make films that unnerve, that shake assumptions, that threaten, that do not soft-sell, but hopefully (an impossible ideal) explode like grenades in people's faces, or open minds up like a good can opener.