Robert Gardner

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

“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

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.

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.

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 1980, Jack Shae and Allen Moore, two ethnographic filmmakers from Harvard University, moved their families to the island of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides. Over the course of 18 months they documented the everyday lives and struggles of the crofters they lived among, whom were even then a vanishing breed. The film is in English and Gaelic. This carefully observed documentary by filmmakers Jack Shae and Allen Moore is a poetic ethnographic film in the style of their mentor, Robert Gardner (“Dead Birds”). It follows the rhythm of life on a wind-swept island in the Outer Hebrides through the four seasons and in the filmmakers’ observation of the day-to-day struggles of a vanishing society we see the deep-time legacy of their kind. The film is in English and Gaelic.

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.

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.

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

Constructed from the audio archive of the 1961 Harvard Peabody Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea: In the encounter with the Hubula people, this work reflects a parallaxing image of the histories of field recording, ethnographic film, and colonialism.

Short film photographed 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

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.

Short by Robert Gardner

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.

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.

A documentary about a legendary American film maker/aviator Robert Fulton who was contracted by the BBC to film aerial cinematography throughout South America.

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.

Independent filmmakers are given a chance to show and discuss their work on a commercial (ABC-TV) affiliate station.

Between the fall of Rome and the European voyages of discovery, no event was more significant than the rise of Islam. Within the span of a few centuries, the Islamic empires blossomed, projecting their power from Africa to the East Indies, and from Spain to India. Inspired by the words of a prophet, and led by Caliphs and Sultans, this political and religious expansion has not been equaled in speed, geographic size, and endurance before or since.