Drawing from the resultant archive of near-constant filming, Robert Todd assembles his own footage into temporal moods which then fracture and multiply through careful editing. Todd’s extensive body of work comprises a library of emotions and observations and reveals a life dedicated to careful looking. Marking the pinnacle of summer, this program features a survey of Todd’s hot-weather films, capturing, interchangeably, the light, oppression, curiosity, and clarity of the East Coast summer.
Organized–and lemonade provided by–Rachael Rakes
All films 16mm. Notes by RR.
INTERPLAY, 2006, 6 min — Diagramming hopeful summer trajectories in pools
PASSAGE, 2012, 20 min — Light angling, summer in construction
Selections from SUMMER LIGHT, 2012-, 12 min — Long weeks of short days. Silence induced stillness. Positive flower porn.
UNDERGROWTH, 2011, 12 min — Day darkness: summer eclipse in a man-made forest of owl.
Some sneak previews of new rays — approx 15 min, 2013
encore: TREMBLING PALACE, 2013, 6 min:cold
A lyrical filmmaker as well as a sound and visual artist, Robert Todd continually produces short works that resist categorization. His visually stunning body of work, which comes from a deeply personal place, takes a variety of poetic approaches to looking at the personal, political, and social ways in which we choose to live.
In the past twenty years he has produced a large body of short-to-medium format films that have been exhibited internationally at a wide variety of venues and festivals including the Media City Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Le Rencontres Internationale, Curtas Vilo do Conde, Indie Lisboa, Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal, Cinématheque Ontario, the Harvard Film Archive, Pacific Film Archive, the Paris Biennial, Slamdance Film Festival, and others. His films have won numerous festival prizes, grants, and artist’s awards. Currently a professor at Emerson College, he has been exhibiting paintings and films while teaching and editing in the Boston area since 1985. He has also worked as cinematographer, editor, sound designer/editor, post-supervisor or music producer on various award-winning broadcast and theatrically released media programs.
Following the screening, we will pull up the chairs and welcome sonic explorers Synthhumpers. This kitchen table-top sound collaboration between Jim Supanick and Josh Solondz features murky improvisations which are anchored in trust and transcendental pursuit. For their last performance, they repurposed an electric football game for their novel interpretation of Alvin Lucier’s The Queen of the South at the 2013 Ann Arbor Film Festival; this time they will save Electronic Dance Music from itself, summoning the spirits of Kiki Gyan and Sugarfoot Bonner through their rhythmmachine. No indie-rocker beard-scratchin’ permitted- this night is strictly to groove with the two jayesses and their special secret guests.
