Anne Charlotte Robertson (1949-2012) was a Super 8 filmmaker and diarist who lived in Framingham, Massachusetts. Her main work is the thirty-eight-hour opus, Five Year Diary, which she began in 1981 and continued filming well beyond five years. Spanning varying numbers of days, each episode is twenty-seven minutesâapproximately eight camera rollsâand the diary is eighty-three reels long. In addition to the Five Year Diary (1981-1997), Robertson made over thirty other short filmsâmostly diaristicâincluding Apologies (1990), Talking to Myself (1985), Magazine Mouth (1983) and Melon Patches, or Reasons to Go On Living (1994).
Robertson took the written diary form and extended it to include documentary, experimental and animated filmmaking techniques. She did not shy away from exposing any parts of her physical situation or emotional life. She became a pioneer of personal documentary and shared experiences and observations on being a vegetarian, her cats, organic gardening, food, and her struggles with weight, her smoking and alcohol addictions, poverty and depression (she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder). Romance (or lack thereof), obsession and the cycle of life are also long-running themes in the Diary films. Robertson sows seeds, reaps vegetables, cooks and pickles them, then composts the scraps. She welcomes babies and buries family members and beloved cats, notes the changing seasons, contemplates suicide, has nervous breakdowns, pines for her celebrity crush (Tom Baker of Doctor Who), finds religion and obsessively documents her own life on film, paper and audio tape.
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