One of the greatest radical filmmakers of the ’60s and ’70s, Robert Kramer mixed fiction with documentary, paying scrupulous attention to the ways in which the personal began to dominate the political. He helped found the Newsreel collective, which made roughly 60 docs and short films devoted to far-left and antiwar causes between 1967 and 1971. From 1975, his 195-minute Milestones is an epic dirge co-directed with John Douglas. Following more than 50 characters through a combination of documentary and staged re-enactments, the film that Kramer described as “Fire-Water-Air-Earth-People” tracks the painful process through which collective action gave way to the Me Decade’s enraged narcissism. (NR) MELISSA ANDERSON

Sept. 4-7, 7 p.m., 2009