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Screening as part of a wider program of Robertson’s work, Program 1 features three of Anne Charlotte Robertson’s remarkable early short films followed by three "Reels" of her Five Year Diary.

Anne Charlotte Robertson was a filmmaker who gave new and melancholy meaning to the term independent. Her struggles with loneliness and manic depression were integrally woven into the complex fabric of her films, most especially her magnum opus the Five Year Diary, a 36-hour chronicle of her daily life begun in 1981 and completed 17 years later.

Robertson began making her earliest works as a self-taught artist, inspired by avant-garde films of such directors as Marie Menken and Jonas Mekas. Her early films make immediately clear her distinct eye for unsettling, raw beauty as well as her formal playfulness and abiding interest in her own self-image.

  • Pixillation (1976, Super 8 to digital, b/w, silent, 3 min)
  • Locomotion (1981, Super 8 to digital, colour, sound, 7 min)
  • Going to Work (1981, Super 8 to digital, colour, sound, 7 min)
  • Five Year Diary, Reel 22: A Short Affair (and) Going Crazy, August 23–September 1, 1982 (1982, Super 8 to digital, colour, sound, 27 min)
  • Five Year Diary, Reel 31: Niagara Falls, August 19–28, 1983 (1983, Super 8 to digital, colour, sound, 27 min)
  • Five Year Diary, Reel 80: Emily Died (1994, Super 8 to digital, colour, sound, 27 min)