06/09/2026
Congratulations to Prof. Whitney Strub on the publication of his latest book FILMS THAT EXPLODE LIKE GRENADES: Robert Kramer and the Search for a Radical Cinema! A “ground-breaking accomplishment,” it is a definitive portrait of independent filmmaker Robert Kramer that traces the revolutionary dreams of the Left from the 1960s through the end of the twentieth century.
For more information and to order visit press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo267053463.html
Films That Explode Like Grenades tracks the histories of leftist film and global revolutionary movements via Kramer’s life and travels. Moving among New York City, Chicago, North Vietnam, Paris, Portugal, Angola, and other crucial flashpoints, Kramer left a major and influential body of work in his wake that has fundamentally shaped the work of radical filmmakers across the globe.
For Strub, Kramer’s career is a key thread in an intimate history of the 1960s New Left, one that emphasizes the complexities of the movement’s internal tensions and its legacies. Drawing on visual analysis, extensive archival research across the United States and France, and myriad interviews with Kramer contemporaries, including Bernardine Dohrn, Tom Hayden, Jonas Mekas, and Kramer’s relatives, Strub transforms Kramer’s life story into a dynamic and engaging social history of 1960s radicalism and its generational legacies.
With detailed mapping of Robert Kramer’s many social and artistic contexts, Films That Explode Like Grenades restores him to a place of global importance in leftist cinema.
