Robert Gardner

An ethnographic documentary documenting the ritual warfare cycle, social life, and belief systems of the Dani people of the Baliem Valley in western New Guinea.

Serpent Mother is about devotion to the Goddess of Snakes and the importance of divine female power in West Bengal Indian life. The film's focus is the Jhapan Festival, the great celebration of snakes. Shown are festival preparations, the role of traditional arts and crafts in the worship of the Goddess, devotional singing, and an exposition of ritual action. The difficult and complex symbolism of the ritual is explained by the participants themselves. In addition to the commentary, this makes accessible what is, at first glance, exotic and inexplicable behavior.

Loving Krishna is about the worship of Krishna and the meaning of devotion. It explores the rural and urban character of the town of Vishnapur in West Bengal by examining the royal past, everyday life, work in traditional arts and crafts, bazaar exchange, and sacred rituals and festivals. Public and private devotional life is represented by detailed visual narratives of the Chariot Journey of Krishna, celebrated by the whole town, and the Birthday Festival commemorated on a much smaller scale of intimate family worship.

After documentarian Ross McElwee gets married, a series of misfortunes follow: his grandmother dies, his wife miscarries, and then his father dies less than a week later. Shaken by the sudden string of deaths, McElwee becomes depressed. After spending time with his friend and former high school poetry teacher, Charlene, he goes to meet his brother, a doctor. In a series of interviews, McElwee contemplates his morbid preoccupation with death and tries to figure out how to shake it off.

Kwakiutl, Kwakwaka'Wakw, potlatches. British Columbia tribe as a civilization in decline as assimilation has almost obliterated native culture. Fort Rupert, Britsh Columbia Canada

Director Robert Gardner and legendary filmmaker Stan Brakhage share an in-depth viewing of Gardner's ethnographic masterwork, Forest of Bliss. The film is shown in its entirety, with Gardner occasionally pausing to elucidate, and Brakhage brilliantly observing tonality, poetic imagery, life, death, the unconscious, and, well, just being damned insightful. - dred

Exploration of the way of life of the Q’eros Indians of Peru, who have lived in the Andes for more than 3,000 years.

Several filmmakers discuss the introduction of Western modes of communication, especially film, to native cultures. While these tools can help a native people to document their own culture, it can also "swallow" their culture, encroaching upon and irreversibly altering it. The film takes its title from a book written by filmmaker Edmund Carpenter in 1972 about his engagement with media in Papua New Guinea.

Robert Gardner interviews Frances H. Flaherty about the production of The Fishermen of Aran.

Fulton made the film during his brief time at Harvard, where he had been invited to teach by Robert Gardner, his friend and collaborator (Fulton would later serve as a cinematographer on Gardner’s 1981 documentary Deep Hearts, among others). Reality’s Invisible could be described as a portrait of the Carpenter Center, yet it is a portrait of an extremely idiosyncratic and distinctive sort. Fulton moves us through the concrete space of the Center’s Le Corbusier-designed building—the only structure by the architect in North America—but, more centrally, presents us footage of students making and discussing their work alongside figures like Gardner, theorist Rudolf Arnheim, artist Stan Vanderbeek, filmmaker Stan Brakhage, and graphic designer Toshi Katayama.

An ethnographic documentary documenting the ritual warfare cycle, social life, and belief systems of the Dani people of the Baliem Valley in western New Guinea.

An ethnographic documentary documenting the ritual warfare cycle, social life, and belief systems of the Dani people of the Baliem Valley in western New Guinea.

Deep Hearts is a film about the Bororo Fulani, a nomadic society located in central Niger Republic and the title is a reference to an important aspect of these people’s thought and demeanor.

“In the middle of the twentieth century, Blunden Harbour was a small village on the coast of Vancouver Island in British Colombia inhabited by a handful of impoverished Kwakiutl Indians who gained their meagre livelihood from fishing and gathering...It is a beginner's attempt to impart the rhythm and atmostphere of a place and a people.” - Robert Gardner

In the highlands of Northern Columbia the Ika live a strenuous and isolated life, economically dependent on small gardens and a handful of domestic animals. They are thought to be descendants of the Maya who fled from the turmoil of Central American High Civilization’s warring states to the remote valleys of Colombia’s Sierra Nevadas. The Ika still inhabit a spectacular but demanding terrain extending between five and fifteen thousand feet, an almost vertical geography through which they move with prodigious ease.

In the highlands of Northern Columbia the Ika live a strenuous and isolated life, economically dependent on small gardens and a handful of domestic animals. They are thought to be descendants of the Maya who fled from the turmoil of Central American High Civilization’s warring states to the remote valleys of Colombia’s Sierra Nevadas. The Ika still inhabit a spectacular but demanding terrain extending between five and fifteen thousand feet, an almost vertical geography through which they move with prodigious ease.

An ethnographic documentary following four Ju/’hoansi (!Kung) men during a multi-day giraffe hunt in the Kalahari Desert, filmed during the Smithsonian–Harvard Peabody expedition of 1952–53.

Started as a class project in what was likely the first filmmaking course ever taught at Harvard, Marathon documents the running of the 1964 Boston Marathon.

The coastal Danakil in Northeastern Ethiopia have found an environmentally suitable way of life netting sharks far out to sea which they export to the south Arabian states.

In the late sixties I picked up my seldom used Arri 35mm camera and set off for the famous tidal flats of Nova Scotia. This fragment is of an elderly farmer who fished a weir using his horse and carriage to go out to it with the ebbing time and home with the incoming tide. I thought I saw a nice structure for a film that even included the element of chase, that old standby of film narrative. Would the carriage get home before being engulfed by the incoming tide, would the fog appear and obscure all points of reference?

Early in the seventies I was involved in the programming of an ABC affiliate TV station in Boston (Channel 5). I was given the opportunity to make what I called "non commercials" to be shown between programs just like a conventional advertisement but consisting instead of a 60 second look at a commonplace social activity. Policeman was one of several such "non commercials" that aired on this station to many peoples' astonishment.

I went to Ladakh in the vain search for a shaman. What I found was a species of Buddhist healing that involved trance and a variety of magical tricks of the healing trade.

Short film photographed by Robert Gardner

Portrays the Nuer, Nilotic herdsmen of the Nile basin. Shows how their daily lives revolve about their cattle, and depicts the psychological bonds between them. Includes extensive use of Nuer music and poetry.

Short by Robert Gardner

While shooting in Benares for Forest of Bliss, I stumbled upon a temple visited by women who came to it with a variety of ailments including love sickness and problems with their families. This fragment begins to indicate the extent of their despair.

Director Robert Gardner and legendary filmmaker Stan Brakhage share an in-depth viewing of Gardner's ethnographic masterwork, Forest of Bliss. The film is shown in its entirety, with Gardner occasionally pausing to elucidate, and Brakhage brilliantly observing tonality, poetic imagery, life, death, the unconscious, and, well, just being damned insightful. - dred

While active in the programming of ABC affiliate Channel 5 in Boston, Gardner was permitted to make a few short one-minute vignettes illustrating the working lives of relatively ordinary people. These vignettes were meant to be used by the TV station as ‘non commercials’ or unexpected looks at ordinary lives.

This short documentary was made while the painter lived in Seattle, Washington, early in the 1950s. It is only the second film made by Robert Gardner and tries to show in cinematic language how this man looked at the world; Mark Tobey himself both performs and is observed. A unique film in the Gardner ouvre, the film not only presents an experimental portrait of Tobey but serves as a window into the American art, avant garde film and poetic movements of this period.

One of my filmic interests in Ethiopia was to see and film the salt trade between the Highlands and the Dallol Depression, a wondrous environment of unbearable heat and intense color. I managed a start only and these are the bits that emerged.

Forest of Bliss is an unsparing yet redemptive account of the inevitable griefs, religious passions and frequent happinesses that punctuate daily life in Benares, India's most holy city. The film unfolds from one sunrise to the next without commentary, subtitles or dialogue. It is an attempt to give the viewer a wholly authentic, though greatly magnified and concentrated, sense of participation in the experiences examined by the film.

Forest of Bliss is an unsparing yet redemptive account of the inevitable griefs, religious passions and frequent happinesses that punctuate daily life in Benares, India's most holy city. The film unfolds from one sunrise to the next without commentary, subtitles or dialogue. It is an attempt to give the viewer a wholly authentic, though greatly magnified and concentrated, sense of participation in the experiences examined by the film.

The people portrayed in this film are called Hamar. They dwell in the thorny scrubland of southwestern Ethiopia, about one hundred miles north of Lake Rudolph, Africa's great inland sea. They are isolated by some distant choice that now limits their movement and defines their condition. At least until recently, it has resulted in their retaining a highly traditional way of life. Hamar women eagerly accept their ritual whipping when boys come of age. Part of that tradition was the open, even flamboyant, observance of male supremacy. In their isolation, they seemed to have refined this not uncommon principle of social organization into a remarkably pure state. Hamar men are masters and their women are slaves. The film tries to disclose the effect on mood and behavior of lives governed by the idea of sexual inequality.

The people portrayed in this film are called Hamar. They dwell in the thorny scrubland of southwestern Ethiopia, about one hundred miles north of Lake Rudolph, Africa's great inland sea. They are isolated by some distant choice that now limits their movement and defines their condition. At least until recently, it has resulted in their retaining a highly traditional way of life. Hamar women eagerly accept their ritual whipping when boys come of age. Part of that tradition was the open, even flamboyant, observance of male supremacy. In their isolation, they seemed to have refined this not uncommon principle of social organization into a remarkably pure state. Hamar men are masters and their women are slaves. The film tries to disclose the effect on mood and behavior of lives governed by the idea of sexual inequality.