Bob Machover, Filmmaker, Cinematographer, Editor, Activist

Robert Machover was a leftist documentary filmmaker. He photographed and edited over 25 films, in addition to producing and directing, and was a longtime member of Newsreel — the radical film collective.

His work includes:  Troublemakers (1966); Shaping Things (1977); Collection & Disposal: A Job for the Birds (1979); Shop Talk (1980); The Great Weirton Steal (1984); and Binocular Vision (1988).

Machover’s most significant creative partnership was with director Robert Kramer, as cinematographer on Kramer’s first three features. Working in a cinema vérité style propelled by handheld camerawork, Machover brought an ebullient “let’s just do it” spirit to these films, giving them their raw, documentary-like aesthetic. Machover has described his instructions from Kramer as simply to follow the action.

The three films — In the Country (1967), The Edge (1967), and Ice (1970) — form what has been described as “a trilogy created in retrospect,” not something Kramer and Machover planned from the outset, but a body of work that coheres around the tensions and contradictions in radical political organizing in America. Machover’s care in individual shots — framing, metering light, finding the right aperture — was noted by critics in reviews of the films, including a restoration review of The Edge.

Machover co-produced the landmark documentary Troublemakers (1966) with filmmaker Norman Fruchter, chronicling living conditions in Newark, New Jersey, and the young SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) organizers working with residents there — including then-SDS president Tom Hayden. Kramer himself appeared in the film and was credited as a writer. The film was shot before the Newark riots that erupted in the same neighborhoods in 1967.

For one film critic, Troublemakers ranked among the best films of the New Left, praised for eschewing both clichés and propaganda in favor of honesty and careful exploration. Machover’s other notable credits from this period include We Got to Live Here (1965).

Following their Newark work, Fruchter and Machover became important figures in the Newsreel collective from 1967 onward. Newsreel was dedicated to documenting and supporting social movements, and Machover’s involvement spanned its New York, San Francisco, and Atlanta chapters. He was also an educator, teaching filmmaking at Free Universities in New York and St. Louis.

He and his partner and first wife, Catherine Pozzo di Borgo (1944 - 2022) mother of their son, Milo, collaborated on a number of films, including Shop Talk, a complex documentary about a group of workers at a NY printing plant who decide to join the union for the first time in search of security at a time of rapid change, and The Great Weirton Steal, chronicling the sale of the huge steel plant in West Virginia to its employees, under an Employee Stock Ownership Plan.

In 2003, Bob was re-married to Karen McCarthy Brown (1942 –2015), an anthropologist of religion. She is best known for her groundbreaking book Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. 

Bob was a devoted sports fan, rooting for the underdog, especially the New York Mets and the Brooklyn Nets.  Even in his final days, he could name the rosters of many teams, the scores, points, rebounds, and assists for any given game. He told Milo, on his deathbed, that one of his biggest regrets about passing was that he would miss this spring's baseball season.

He loved American jazz. In his youth, he was a regular at NYC "Swing Street" clubs, to hear the greats of the Bebop era. He compulsively collected all their LPs, and until the end, he could readily identify the personnel on almost every recording.  He also loved Baroque music, especially Bach. His son Milo was inspired to study classical music and became a talented flutist and music teacher in Germany, active in the Early Music scene. Bob was proud of Milo's career choice (but disappointed that he didn't play the saxophone!).

Machover inherited from his parents, Karen and Solomon, a love of hiking and photographing the great outdoors, especially the natural beauty of California landscapes. He traveled the world. He was also an avid birder, scrupulously cataloging his sightings — he led numerous birding expeditions — and brought that lifelong passion to his documentary, Binocular Vision. The film reflects the same observational sensibility that defined his documentary work — patient, attentive, and deeply engaged with the subject.

Bob Machover’s body of work sits at the intersection of documentary filmmaking and political organizing, making him a significant figure in the tradition of American activist cinema. As the eye behind the camera for some of Robert Kramer’s most important early films, and as a co-creator of Troublemakers — one of the defining documents of the New Left — Machover’s contributions to American independent film endure as a record of a turbulent and transformative era.

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