The IFI & AEMI Projections will present the work of the exceptional, if little known, film artist, Anne Charlotte Robertson on January 20th at 6.30pm in a programme curated and introduced by Benjamin Cook (Director of LUX) and in association with Harvard Film Archive. It will be the inaugural screening for AEMI Projections (Artists’ & Experimental Moving Image), a new organisation which aims to develop audiences for artists’ moving image in Ireland through regular curated programmes of both Irish and international work, and which builds on work already carried out by other organisations, particularly The Experimental Film Club.
Begun in the early 1980s and running to over 38 hours of Super 8 film, Anne Charlotte Robertson’s Five Year Diary stands as one of the major works of diary filmmaking. The films are an intimate and exhaustively narrated chronicle of her daily life in Framingham, Massachusetts and her battles with depression, paranoia, and borderline schizophrenia. Over the course of the Diary, Robertson unflinchingly documents nervous breakdowns and hospitalisations, her obsessive crush on Doctor Who actor Tom Baker, her battles with weight, the side effects of prescription medication and the death of her three-year-old niece, Emily. Though often painfully raw and emotional, the diary is not entirely bleak, leavened with self-awareness and humour it becomes a redemptive form of self-therapy which for Robertson ultimately tells ‘the story of a mind’s survival.’
Tickets for this screening are available now from the IFI Box Office on 01 679 3477 or online at www.ifi.ie.
After the screening at the IFI, a discussion will follow in Temple Bar Gallery + Studios with Benjamin Cook, addressing Anne Charlotte Robertson and her legacy, in association with LUX, IFI and TBG+S. This discussion is free to attend but places are limited so booking is advised via www.templebargallery.com
