In 1981, in Boston, Massachusetts, Anne Charlotte Robertson bought five rolls of Super 8 film with which to record her daily life. She was 32 years old. She’d kept extensive written diaries since childhood and she’d made a dozen short films in the previous five years. She’d seen the series of nude self-portraits Eleanor Antin had taken to chart her weight loss and thought she’d try something similar on film. Five rolls of film – it wasn’t enough, she later said.1
Reel 3, Christmas and New Year ’82, December 20, 1981 – January 9, 1982. Silence. Pinkish patties in a pan of oil. The active oil twitches, glitters. The patties are brown. A spatula lifts them, sets them on paper towels. Robertson in a sleeveless yellow leotard holding a thick book. Sound. Robertson standing in a bright room. White winter in the windows behind her. Potted plants on boards nailed across the frames. She holds up a rhinestone necklace, puts it on. Crumbled brown food cooking in a pan. Mushrooms cooking in another pan. Rice in a red cast iron pot. Artichokes and onions in a blue cast iron pot. A white plastic bucket full of food scraps. A ribbed glass bowl of tangerines, pears, red and green grapes, dried figs, dates, raisins. A wedge of dark brown bread on a plate with a wrapped stick of margarine, one severed slice spread with it. A large wooden bowl of salad. Robertson’s hands toss it with tongs. A dinner plate laid with rice, brown crumble, an artichoke, a slice of bread, wooden chopsticks. A small bowl of salad. A large white enamelled pot full of homemade cookies. The oily dregs at the bottom of the blue pot. A dismembered artichoke on a plate. Robertson walks into a bright bedroom dangling the rhinestone necklace. A potted Norfolk pine decorated like a Christmas tree. The white plastic compost bin. A dark blue water kettle on the stove. A pack of tempeh, a glass bowl, a wooden spoon, a jar of amber liquid, a salt shaker, a wooden cutting board, a knife, a book: The Book of Tempeh. A hand shaking salt into the bowl. A hand stirring water in the bowl. A recipe for ‘Seasoned Crisp Tempeh’ in the book. A block of unwrapped tempeh on the cutting board. Tempeh cut into strips. Tempeh cut into thinner strips. Tempeh strips in the bowl of water. Tempeh strips being patted dry with paper towel. Oil pooling in a stainless pan. Range knob set to med-high. Tempeh cooking in the oil. Oily tempeh strips blotting on paper towels. Robertson’s hands packing cooked tempeh into a lidded Pyrex container. Robertson puts the container into the unlit refrigerator, next to string-wrapped paper boxes, a jar of spaghetti sauce. She walks across a dark pink corner of a room and through a doorway – out of sight. Robertson’s face, out of focus, looks into the camera. A large potato sitting on a thin slurry of itself on a grater in a bowl. The potato – much smaller – sitting on the grater in the bowl. The bowl of grated potato with a little heap of white flour, a scatter of chopped green bits. Potato patties frying in oil in a deep cast iron pot. A dangling silver necklace with long oval pendant. Robertson drops the pendant beneath her leotard, between her breasts. Robertson walks to her kitchen sink. A massive pile of dishes on the counter and drying rack. She puts the clean dishes away. She washes the dirty dishes. Clanking. Rush of running water. There is the sound, too, of a ticking clock. She drags from a cigarette. Puts it in an ashtray on the counter. Pours a little water into the ashtray. Rotary phone on the wall rings – loud. She holds it to her ear with her shoulder, continues to wash. Stops, says, A good grocery store near here that’s open? Oh gee, on Sunday? Pause. Says, Right now I’m washing my dishes and making a movie. Pause. Says, I said I have to finish this, and then I’ll put my clothes on; then I’ll be ready. The phone is back on the wall. She continues to wash. Drags from a cigarette. Drinks from a coffee cup. Puts a dish into a cupboard. Disappears.
Robertson: When I first began the diary, I used to carry the camera every day and take a picture almost every hour. Her phrasing: she doesn’t film; she takes a picture. And the film often feels that way – like a collection of snapshots. What she’s chosen to look at, to make note of, often briefly, as the eye moves.
She shot on Super 8 film, a small gauge stock introduced by Kodak in 1965 and marketed to amateur filmmakers interested primarily in filming their families, their vacations. It has the warm, grainy, handheld qualities we associate with nostalgic, homey scenes from the era in which Robertson was working, giving Five Year Diary an immediate aura of approachability and familiarity that she complicates with her subject matter, which includes mental illness, addiction, loneliness, alienation.
Robertson: I thought I’d focus on all the things I ever did that were wrong, and then I’d put them, one by one, into the films, along with the bingeing, and get perspective so I could shed bad habits.2
Reel 3, continued. Brown food cooking in red pot. Viscous bubbling. Robertson’s hand uses a wooden spoon to stir in parsley, crumbled tempeh. She plonks a blue and white plate down loudly onto the stovetop, spoons entire contents of pot onto plate. Cuts a slice of bread from a dark loaf. Spreads it with margarine. A pot of boiling water. A slab of flat, dry noodles. She puts the noodles into the pot. Robertson’s torso and legs as she walks. Robertson runs into another room. The necklace with the oval pendant, a rainbow beaded necklace on Robertson’s chest. Robertson’s body from top down to feet. The compost bucket. Outside – a handwritten sign, Our Famous Boston Baked Beans. Bronze representations of food embedded in the sidewalk – lettuce leaves, pizza slices. A shelf of dried fruit in a store. Copper cookware hanging in a shop window. Ceramic cups for sale. A table of produce at a bodega. Nuts in bags. Boxes of panettone. Marinated peppers in oil. Muffins, donuts at a bakery. A sign that says, ‘Now Serving Breakfast and Hot Lunch Meals’. Back in her apartment – a paper sack on a table. She pulls from it a cup of coffee. Takes off the lid, stirs it. Pulls a large, paper-wrapped sandwich from the bag, slides it onto a plate. Unwraps the sandwich, messy with red sauce. The sandwich on the plate with a bite taken out. The sandwich on the plate, half-eaten. A small chunk of sandwich on the plate. Outside again – a case of white frosted cakes. A tower of lollipops. Glazed apricots. Back in her apartment – a bottle of horseradish sauce. With a spoon, Robertson drops white horseradish onto a plate of baked potato, brussels sprouts, buttered bread. She sprinkles chopped green bits onto the plate. A pot of wet, cooked greens. A pot of cooked rice. A pot of simmering red stew. She spoons greens onto a bowl of rice. She spoons red sauce onto a bowl of rice. A glass jar of homemade granola. Glazed apricots. Robertson’s hands rolling the jar of granola. Red grapes in a ribbed glass bowl. Robertson’s hands clasped as though in prayer. Robertson turns away and walks to an unfinished weaving on a loom. Sits cross-legged on a stool, adjusts the loom. A bowl of salad. A pot of rice. Crumbled brown food being tossed close up, out of focus. Robertson’s hands on the weaving, moving. Robertson sitting, weaving. Sunlight moves across the room. The weaving lengthens. Robertson stands, continues to weave. The room darkens.
A few weeks after she began filming herself, Robertson’s father asked her to tell him a story. But, she said, I didn’t really have a story to tell, except to expand on my day-to-day life inside my apartment. Her father died two months later, the day after she finished the weaving she works on in Reel 3. She thought her completion of the weaving was connected to her father’s death in some way – that she had somehow predicted it. After that, she said, the film just sort of came.3
Robertson: The whole film starts out with me carrying some grocery bags into the apartment and then emptying out a huge bag full of produce from my garden and from the co-op. Then I take off a black coat, hang it up, go into the living room, and get myself a dictionary – a 1936 dictionary, which has fantastic definitions for the word “fat.” In the thirties, “fat” meant something good. It meant plump, pleasing – the best part of your work is a “fat” job – and “thin” had a lot of opprobrium attached: meager, of slender means.4
Reel 2, The Definitions of Fat and Thin. December 13 – 22, 1981. Robertson emerges from a dark curtained doorway in a yellow leotard, her hair in a high ponytail. She sits at a table, puts her finger on the page of an open book, opens her mouth to speak. She sits at the table with an arm resting along either side of the open book. She reads aloud: Abounding with fat, as fleshy, corpulent, plump, oily, unctuous, rich (said of food), coarse, heavy, dull, slow-witted. Characterised by some element of richness, as fat or resinous wood, fat coal, rich and volatile matter, et cetera. Fertile, as, a fat soil. Profitable, as, a fat office. She slides the book slightly to her right. Rich, affluent, well-stocked, as a fat larder. Thick, well filled-out, extended, as, a fat-faced type. Any animal tissue consisting chiefly of cells distended with greasy or oily matter, or the oily or greasy matter itself. The best or richest productions, the best part, especially lucrative or advantageous work. To make or grow fat. She leans back in her chair. On a white surface, a plate of cubed tofu, whole raw mushrooms, chopped greens, chopsticks. Next to it, a glass jar of brown sauce. The chair (empty) at the table at which she’d been sitting. The book open on the table. A ribbed glass serving bowl in front of it, a large pile of peanut shells next to it, a glass of pale yellow liquid next to those. Robertson enters the picture wearing a blue cardigan and long red socks over the yellow leotard. She sits in the chair, props her feet on a little stool. Says, Thin. Reaches for the book, picks it up and sets it on her knees. Reaches for the glass bowl and drags it towards her, to the edge of the table. Reads aloud from the book: Of relatively little depth, not thick, as thin paper. She grabs a handful of peanuts from the bowl. Of small diameter, slender, fine, as thin wire. Cracks the peanuts. Of little consistency – leans forward to dump shells onto the shell pile – density, or thickness, rare, rarefied, as thin broth, thin air. Puts peanuts into mouth. Not close – words garbled by chewing – crowded, or abundant. Grabs peanuts from bowl. Scanty – she slides forward in her seat to better reach the bowl and shell pile – as, thin grass. Transparent, flimsy, slight, as a thin pretext or disguise. Cracks shells onto pile. Wanting substance, strength, or richness, weak (of liquors), as a thin wine. Reaches for cup, takes a drink. Puts peanuts in mouth. Wanting in body or volume, not full, high-pitched – raises the timbre of her voice, puts peanuts in mouth – or shrill and feeble, as a thin voice. Cracks shells onto pile, puts peanuts in mouth. Slim, slender, spare, lean – throws back her head to toss peanuts into mouth – as a thin face. Grabs peanuts from the bowl. Lacking sufficient density or contrast – words unintelligible from chewing – thin, lean, spare, gaunt, haggard, especially of persons. Cracks shells onto pile. Thin, the most general word – throws head back to toss peanuts in her mouth – is opposed to stout or fat, and often suggests thinness or exhaustion, as careworn and thin. Puts more nuts in mouth. Lean, more often than thin, suggests a natural state. Spare implies lack of superfluous flesh – cracks shells, chews – and often suggests abstemiousness or sinewy strength, as, as lean as a greyhound. She turns quickly to look at the camera, then looks back to the book. A spare form. That which is lank is often long – puts nuts in her mouth – or slender, sometimes shrunken or flabby, as well as thin, as, lank with fasting. Gaunt often adds thin to the implication of being bony – puts nuts in mouth – or angular – reaches for more nuts. Haggard suggests a wild and hollow-eyed appearance. The screen goes white, the sound stops.
She filmed herself daily for fifteen years, with only a few short stretches of time when she didn’t [a few of which were during stays at mental hospitals, where cameras were not allowed]. She eventually edited hundreds of rolls of film into reels, 83 in total, each of which is approximately 27 minutes, or eight rolls, in duration.
The conceptual framework of the film, its title, Robertson said, refers to the little blank books with locks and keys, that allow only a few lines to each day’s notation – the type of mass-produced diary that was popular at the time and marketed almost exclusively to women.5 Everything I take is in the film, Robertson said in a 1990 interview, gesturing towards the inclusive, unedited sensibility generally attributed to the diary form.6 But, later in the interview, she acknowledged cutting all the scenes in which she’d appeared nude, reducing the reel count of the work from 90 to 83. The aesthetic quality of Five Year Diary approaches what we think of as direct, unmediated experience (if such a thing exists), but it quickly becomes apparent how much editing Robertson did, and how her presence in the film is an ongoing performance for the camera. A diary is often considered a raw thing, a non-work, formless and lacking style – the crude material from which a finished work might eventually be crafted and shaped. But Five Year Diary is a heavily manipulated, formally inventive film, and its genius originates from that apparent contradiction, at the frictional edge of accident and intention. The effect is that of simultaneous control and release; the threat of unravel held in a steady hand.
She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Massachusetts at Boston with a Bachelor of Arts in Art and Psychology. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree with honours in Filmmaking from Massachusetts College of Art.7 She admired films by Carolee Schneemann, Jonas Mekas, Marjorie Keller, Stan Brakhage, Ed Pincus. She was taught by Super 8 filmmaker Saul Levine.
Reel 26. First Semester Grad School. February 28 – May 20, 1983. Male voice: Well, it’s like this is a very, uh, privileged kind of experience. Robertson’s face in a dark room. Pale green plant shoots poking out of dirt. Robertson’s voice: To see it uncut? Robertson’s hands place balls of cookie dough onto a baking tray on a stovetop. Male voice: Yeah, I mean, but – Robertson’s voice: Frenetic. Male voice: Yeah, well, just the fact, just the fact that you, um, made these direct expressions – a white, blurred, hazy moon, almost full, in a black sky – let them fall together in this way and showed them to us without, you know, like, without further editing, right? Robertson’s hands scrubbing a pan in a dark sink, a canister of Bon Ami scouring powder on the countertop next to her. I mean, that is you, you selected a moment, and you selected a bunch of other moments, you let them fall together in this space the way they fell together in this space. The Bon Ami canister moves slightly, moves again, again: like it’s twitching, getting grimier and grimier each time Robertson grabs it. The correspondences are incredible. Robertson: Yeah. The shining copper bottom of the pan. Male voice: You know, it’s like the kind of correspondences that were generated are absolutely incredible – college students in a low-lit classroom, working at a long, lamp-lit table – and, and the thing that becomes an issue for me is to wondering what happens when you start to cut something like this, like what, you know, what is taking something that is so direct and has got the qualities that this has in it and the qualities are so in tune with the circumstance you’re describing, you know, it’s like the – Robertson standing at her stove in a kitchen lit only by two lamps shoved up next to the range; she’s got four pans going on the burners – that the image and sound would fall together this way – close-up of an omelette in a pan, a red cast iron pot of bright green broccoli, a large can of V-8, a glass full of V-8, a yellow plastic lighter on the stovetop – has so much, you know, is so much a part of the whole expression that’s going on, it’s like all one – Robertson sitting at a table in her apartment, facing a small television set with a vivid blue screen, a plate of food in front of her, glass of V-8, and a pack of cigarettes – it’s like all one complex of expressions – Robertson eating, drinking, smoking, writing at the table – so the issue is, what happens when you start to edit something – in a dark room, a window, bright blue from a streetlight outside and spattered with rain – like this, how do you – Robertson’s cat on the windowsill, looking out – relate to the question of applying a more rational and analytic head – dark silhouettes of potted plants on a shelf, outside light dazzles wet drops on the window’s glass – to this stuff; what are you doing by doing it, you know, are you moving it closer to being, um, a traditional sort of artwork, would you be moving it farther away from being a – you know, it’s like, cos it’s not, it wasn’t a completely – drops on blue glass – satisfying experience formally, you know, that aspect of it was missing, um, that was distinct somehow and I felt like there was a very distinct quality – Robertson at her table, TV on, objects on table twitching, moving, liquid in her glass lowering – that had to do with formal structure and heavy, heavy intrusions of intention that I actually think I would’ve welcomed – Robertson at her table, a sketch board on her lap, working – somewhere along the line or, or, or a reflective kind of pin down of a major – Robertson’s table strewn with things, lamp has been shut off; black – but then the other part of it is that – Robertson in her bed, asleep beneath a quilt in a pink-lit room, tossing and turning – that it seemed too short in a way. A bottle of white wine, three cello-wrapped Choco-Chip cookies, a Snickers bar, a Hershey’s bar on a wooden table. That is – a wood-handled tool with a green metal hook at the end enters the frame – it would seem to me – the tool hooks, slides the cookies towards the bottom of the frame – like, like this is just, this is like a diary and a sketchbook – tool hooks, slides the Hershey’s bar to the bottom of the frame – of something much more elaborate and – tool hooks, slides Snickers bar to bottom of frame – much more complicated – tool hooks, slides bottle of wine to bottom of frame – a lot of it needing elaboration. You know, it’s like I felt as if this, with shaping, with shaping, that this could become a very long, major, elaborate, uh involuted kind of work.
Later on in reel 26, we sense Robertson’s anxiety about the critique of her work, and also her defiance – she juxtaposes imagery, for example, of a stop-motion animation of a drawing of a distraught face with an instructor’s reiteration that he was missing a certain sense of satisfaction from the film, and when he suspect[s] it would be much more appropriate to this material to frame it as a parable, a STOP sign flashes on the screen. Nevertheless, she does seem to incorporate the advice given to her, to a certain degree – particularly with regards to the complex narrative audio tracks of reels 22 and 23, which, much as the professor had suggested, seem to have been made by a person who [has] reflections upon the events rather than by someone who is travelling through them. In those reels and in others, the sound is densely layered – sound on film playing simultaneously with sound on tape, or multiple tapes – creating a complex, polyvocal narrative. (In Reel 23, she narrates her nervous breakdown in two recordings – one taken at the time and one from a later date – which weave together and interrupt each other like an interior monologue.) She sometimes pairs audio tracks with non-corresponding footage, or a real-time audio recording played over sped-up, time-lapsed footage, creating a dissonance of the visible and audible that conjures the entanglement of thought and sensory perception. She collapses hours of film into ghostly, frenetic bursts of activity and uses hundreds of single shots to create stuttering stop-motion animations of herself, other people, objects. The manic, speeding energy of the frequently time-lapsed footage within the context of Five Year Diary’s marathon duration comes very close to what time feels like – fast and slow, momentary and unending.
Reel 23. A Breakdown and After the Mental Hospital. September 1 – December 13, 1982. A black screen. Silence except for Robertson’s double-layered voice-over. [Robertson’s voice, tremulous, high-pitched, says something unintelligible.] Robertson’s voice – sounding deeper, steadier, older – says, My father had died in January. [I think, sometimes] I was laid off in July from the first good job I’d ever had. [To love someone] I was living alone in a poor neighborhood. [I do not entirely know] I’d registered for courses for my graduate degree. [And anyone I say I love] However the loan had been refused. [that I have just met] The camera tech threatened [how can I say I love them] to call the cops and take away the camera I had borrowed. [I love them, that’s all] I had film shows at school and at home [people have been saying, where’s your proof]. A red card with folded flaps is opened to reveal the words ‘Five Year Diary’. [wait a week] The flaps open, open again, again, again, again. I met a wonderful artist. [act if, and don’t turn around] I had a one night relationship and discovered he was a bisexual [wait for him, til you least expect him] and he was leaving town [when you don’t need him] next week. [he’ll come, at the least expected time he’ll come] I had accumulated about nine hundred rolls of film to date. [heavens to Betsy]. Inside a refrigerator, a box of citrus, bags of vegetables, a blue cast iron pot. The refrigerator door, a Mickey Mouse Club sticker on it. [when] Bagged vegetables inside refrigerator, a container that says ‘Give your cat the bright eyes look’. Couldn’t afford to get it processed – beet and leek leaves – and one night decided [when] I was not going to eat – bags of vegetables, a wrapped stick of margarine – anymore [when is he going to come here] – Robertson stands in front of the refrigerator; the room is dark except for two lamps pulled up close to her – anything that would cause pain. Robertson pulling the beets and leeks from the refrigerator and putting them into a white plastic bucket. [or am I going to meet him] This included root vegetables [on what street] – Robertson spotlit by the lamps – which had to be replanted so they could grown their own seeds. [what town] This is sign language – Robertson gesturing from the bucket of vegetables, making signals with her hands – I am in a fever [I am not sure] of what is called a nervous breakdown [I am not sure of what exactly has happened in my lifetime, I know several times I have lost time] – and you are supposed to know what this means, this great and vast, deep sign language [the earth has shook under my feet and everyone should know the reason]. Robertson holds up both fisted hands, eyes closed. [sometimes it has seemed to be the breathing of another being] Robertson clasps hands together as if in prayer, lowers head to hands. Her torso lifting and falling with heavy breathing. [and I thought him surrounding me and perhaps this is true]. She picks up the white bucket of vegetables, exits. A night sky with blurred streetlights, stoplights, headlights of cars in the distance. [and it is also possible] I’d had three breakdowns previously and been hospitalized and was terrified. Blurred lights, closer now. [that the world shook] Went out into the dark to plant the vegetables, got to the chainlink fence at the community garden and chickened out and came back. The vegetables in the white bucket on the floor in her apartment. [in its destruction, but it is also possible that I don’t know, it is also possible that I don’t know everything] Blurred vegetables in bucket. [well, perhaps I love a man who can travel through time] I thought I – beets in bucket – was in love with a TV star, [his eyes are unguarded] had confessed this to my mother finally. [love, which fires the cosmos, love] Bag of carrots on a table. [love, which supplies my delusions] I was in love with, uh, several men – carrots, the words ‘Fresh California Carrots’ printed on the bag – [which supplies the ground, breathing for me] and keeping a constant diary. In this scene, and in all these scenes [which supplies the sky], I’m trying to take pictures of deep significance. This bag is not a toy. The text on the bag: ‘when disposed of’, ‘to water or air pollution’, ‘keep away from babies or children’, ‘this bag is not a toy’.[dropping a soft rain on me and not a rain of fire] A telephone rings. Everything would have significance later or for my true love [rewinding the movie of life] who would synchronise his film, his diary – Robertson in a chair in her kitchen with a backpack and the bucket of vegetables by her feet, putting on shoes – [I have thought of possible worlds] with my film.[and the way it can be] Here’s my cat Amy – the phone continues to ring – thirteen years old, in the corner – Robertson’s hand descends to put a small object into a glass cup on a spotlit table – [there’s an intermission now] and there I’m keeping every single scrap of film I ever cut out or ever had [okay] for my true love someday. Robertson eats from something white, like a hunk of bread, in the dark.
Robertson: It’s a real old thing. Instead of putting you in iron chains, they put you in drug chains.8
She lived alone in Boston for fourteen years. The first year or two of Diary were filmed in her apartment there. I can’t live with anyone else; I’m just too freaky, she says in Reel 23. In 1983, when she was 34, she moved in with her mother, in her mother’s house in Framingham, Massachusetts. We get the sense this is somehow related to Robertson’s recent nervous breakdown; in the reels that follow, she makes references to the fact that her mother is in some ways her caretaker – perhaps ensuring that Robertson takes her medication – who asks Robertson to abstain from ‘hard liquor’ in the house. Robertson lived, as her friend Toni Treadway describes in a 2014 tribute, in harmony and disharmony with her mother until her mother died in 2010.9 Robertson died in 2012, at the age of 63, of lung cancer.
Reel 31. Niagara Falls. August 19 – 28, 1983. A child, pre-verbal, making continuous babbling language-like sounds. Robertson in a sunny bedroom beneath a yellow blanket, with her cat Amy next to her. Robertson and Amy twitching, turning. Robertson sitting up. I found the antidepressants were making me sleep a lot. Rows of vegetables in clear glass jars. Some of the pickles I made from my produce. A spread of tarot cards on a bed. I was still doing the tarot cards – a card, The Lovers – and the I-Ching – yellow chunk of moon rising through trees, across black sky – and watching the moon rise. A woman’s voice, not Robertson’s: It’s not a camera; it’s a tape recorder. Large, bright, pale yellow moon, unfocused. Moon rising again in sky. Child continues to make sing-songy sounds, says, mum mum mum mum, mee! Sunlight brightening in bedroom where Robertson sleeps beneath yellow blanket with cat beside her. I was sleeping so much. I had tried so many drugs. Amy would sleep with me. Robertson in shadow in a room with bright summer trees in the windows behind her. I sat down at my mother’s electric typewriter every day and recorded my dreams, the weather, and the accomplishments for the day. I was trying to do a bit of gestalt therapy, to stay in the now and record the events of my life – orange, mottled moon in black sky – as a part of knowing what is now. Her hand reaches for a tomato plant in a garden, picks a large, ripe tomato. Now the tomatoes are ripe. A sunny room, a small table spread with newspapers, magazines, a book, a pack of cigarettes, an ashtray, a plastic lighter, a cup of milky coffee, a plate of half-eaten pancakes. Now I am having pancakes for breakfast.
She credited her daily filming practice with giving structure, meaning and purpose to her life. Once she’d filmed herself bingeing, her tendency to binge went away. After she made a film about her suicidal ideation, she no longer thought about suicide. Watching reel after reel, a sense of Robertson’s fixations quickly emerges: the moon, her garden, her cats, vegetarian cooking, the seasons and the natural world, smoking and drinking, issues of weight and body image, a frustrated romantic longing. Once she moved into her mother’s house in Framingham, she began to film the gazebo in the back yard, day after day, season after season. It was where she’d always hoped her wedding might take place. Robertson said, Monet did his haystacks and I have done the gazebo in the backyard.10
For many years, Robertson obsessed over Tom Baker, then star of the television show Doctor Who. She mailed him hours of audio tapes and film footage. (She said: He had written to me in 1989, thanking me for films of myself, my cats, and my family.)11 When she felt she couldn’t talk to family or friends, she talked to the camera –ostensibly to Tom – and sent him the recordings. She said: I talk on tape and I’m normal. I have to lie to my shrink.12 She sometimes described Five Year Diary as her trousseau, her true-so: the thing she could present to her future partner when he asked, What have you been doing with the rest of your life? When she mailed portions of the work to Baker, she was sending it, it seems, as a sort of proposal, an attempt to secure the love she desired with the very expression of that desire. Similar to the way in which she thought she’d predicted her father’s death in Reel 3, her hope of connection with Baker represents the power – the magic, even – she believed her films to possess.
Reel 47, I Thought the Film Would End. October 21 – November 2, 1986. Robertson sits outside, on a cement stoop, barefoot, in sweatpants and a plaid flannel shirt. She squints, holds one hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. I was sitting in the sun with Amy, but she went away, Robertson says. She’s gotta go to the vet. Robertson smoothes her hair back several times with one hand. This afternoon. She crosses her arms on her knees. There’s a sound of children talking. Kids walking by. She puts a hand on the back of her neck. Still taping to Tom. Amy refuses to be in the picture with me. She flips her hair off her shoulders with both hands, props one hand near her mouth, puts the other on her hip. Loud sound of automobile traffic. There goes the school bus. I hate most economic institutions, almost everything there is about civilization. She taps her knee with one hand, tucks hair behind one ear. And I’ve been, uh – she shields her eyes – writing to Tom about that. I got into hell again today. She looks away, taps her knee with her hand. I mean I talked about it. She looks at the camera, looks down, shakes head. If I’m god of this universe, I’m kinda a ugly-looking dog – she crosses her arms on her knees – I mean, god. She laughs, looks down. Been reading Jim Morrison’s book, great. She waves her hand. Eh. Tom Baker’s in it. She nods. He called it his low life. Took his clothes off in front of the camera. She shrugs. Nothing wrong with that. Now the camera is closer on her face. End of the film is here. She lifts her head, closes her eyes, shakes her head, sighs. Almost here, next Monday anyway. Tomorrow night we’ll get the trick-or-treaters – she nods – and today you get to see the animal clinic. Yeah, great stuff. She pushes her hair back with both hands, flips it forward again. Really hot. She holds up both hands, waggles her fingers, then crosses her arms on her chest. Her face is grim. Well and then, uh, Saturday – she rubs her face with one hand – has nothing happening; Sunday, going to a religious group discussing our beliefs in God. She clasps her hands as in prayer, nods. Mm hmm. I have the weirdest belief. She tucks hair behind her ears, closes eyes. So now we’ll talk about the other stuff we agree in, uh, believe in, uh – waves her hand in a circle – believe in, um, that’s my church; that’s Sunday. Monday is the last day of my film. She looks at the camera, holds up one hand, counts off on her fingers. Gonna go to my shrink, gonna go to my studio, and I think of new films, and I mope in my studio cos it’s not gonna be there much longer and, and I come home. Big day. She nods, looks away. Now the light has changed, the camera’s position has shifted, and her orange cat, Amy, is asleep in the sun in a green lawn chair behind her. Don’t know when it stopped, here I said all these great things. She pushes her hair back, gestures with one hand, grimaces. She shakes her head, smiles, leans her head back, laughs. Shakes her head. I don’t remember what they were. Now she’s holding an unlit cigarette. I’m spreading a rumour that there is a secret doctrine among filmmakers about when the film runs out and you don’t notice it and you say well, God took the rest. A lot of them dedicated filmmakers I know would go to my blue cube – she strikes the air with her cigarette hand for emphasis – the movie and TV studios and they would make their movies. Movies movies they would make their movies forevermore. She laughs. Oh. Nobody wants to live forever. She makes a disgusted face. Tsch. Why not? You all say, “I’m not worth it”. Besides – she speaks in a deep, dumb caricature of a male voice – I don’t like the way I look. Couldn’t stand it for infinity. Her regular voice returns. Why don’t they accept themselves? She looks away. She looks at the camera. You’re almost over, film. She gestures with her cigarette hand. This is what I’m looking at. The screen goes white.
When I got to the five-year mark in 1986, Robertson said, I kept going because, basically, I didn’t have a happy ending for my movie. She continued to film her Diary for the next 11 years.
Money was always an issue. When she screened her films – she did three marathon screenings during her life – she screened her original footage, because she couldn’t afford to make copies or transfer them to tape or digital. Each screening therefore endangered the work: with repeated showings came the increased risk that the film would degrade. One of the reasons her work is not as well-known as the work of some of her contemporaries is that the copies simply haven’t been available for viewing. But the Harvard Film Archive – recipient of Robertson’s extensive archive, as stipulated in her will – has nearly finished their work of restoring and digitising all 83 reels. According to their website, they are working with the award-winning small gauge film lab Brodsky and Treadway to preserve these unique films by creating new digital masters, incorporating the disparate soundtracks, and will make them available for rental.
Robertson: When I started the film, I thought I’d lose weight; and the second thing I thought was that I’d try to tell a story, as my father told me to; and the third thing I thought was that the film would be a trousseau; and the fourth thing was my realizing that my children would be watching.13 When the film ends, she’s 100 pounds heavier than when she started. She’s unmarried. She has no children. She has thousands of hours of her life on tape, which she has spent the previous 15 years editing, shaping, narrating, and exhibiting.
A cat is not quite a child, she says in Reel 80. Shortly thereafter, her three-year-old niece Emily dies suddenly, inexplicably. The last picture of her in my film, Robertson says, she was waving goodbye. Robertson had a nervous breakdown soon after Emily’s death and was hospitalised for three weeks. By the time she returns to her mother’s house, to her film, the flowers are starting to die – it’s almost autumn. In Reel 81, she sits on a bed, dressed in black, and speaks to the camera and to the floor. She says, I had a breakdown. So what if I look ugly. I’m 45, I haven’t got any kids, and the little niece that called me Auntie Anne – she died. She died. Well, I hope I believe in God, and I hope I believe in heaven. Then she stands up and strides out of the frame.
The last reel of the film, number 83, compresses footage from December 24, 1995 to March 19, 1997 – a much longer span of time than most of the other reels. The footage is entirely time-lapsed from start to finish, and – maybe because I know it’s the final one – seems to move more quickly than the lapsed footage in the other reels. It careens, rushing faster and faster towards its end.
Reel 83, Untitled. December 24-March 19, 1997. Silence. Robertson sitting in a chair, leaning over to spread newspaper on the floor, filling a white plastic tray with dirt, then seeds – then a second tray, then a third. Her hands a blur, like smoke. An orange quarter moon in a black sky. Robertson’s hands scattering bird seed on the ground around the base of a tree. Her hand crushing eggshells in a small bowl, scattering them over the birdseed. Robertson in her sunny bedroom. She changes the numbers on a white sign so that instead of 234 pounds it says 232 pounds. Pigeons eating seed on the ground, seen from a window. Blurred birds eating from a rocking, hanging feeder. A group of brown sparrows eating seed on the ground – then suddenly taking flight together. A thin, cream crescent moon in a black sky. Robertson in her sunny bedroom, adjusting the white sign so that it says 231 pounds. Children helping to prepare food in a kitchen. A child leaning over a candlelit cake in the dark, blowing out the candles one by one. Blurred people in a living room. Vegetables growing in a garden. A wheelbarrow heaped with baskets of tomatoes. A white chicken in a coop. A basket of tomatoes. Blurred bunches of flowers. Baskets of vegetables at a vendor’s stall. Little clumps of colourful flowers surrounded by dirt. Red flowers on a bush. Cascading yellow flowers. Clusters of pale pink flowers on a bush. A large rainbow made of rows of flowers, as at a mall or flower show. Purple hyacinths growing in a garden. Blurred white flowers. Blurred pink flowers. Koi darting through a shallow pond. A small waterfall. The gazebo in her mother’s backyard, surrounded by light snow. Robertson in her bedroom, adjusting the sign so that it says 230 pounds. She adjusts the numbers on the mirror from 49 45 49 to 49 47 48. White trays of seedlings. Little white flowers on green stems growing from brown leaves. Purple crocuses. Robertson’s black and white cat takes a step on a cement path outside, in the sun.
That’s it. The end. It’s as though the film roll has simply run out, which it has.
When Five Year Diary was screened at the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York in 1988, Robertson was interviewed by a reporter for The New York Times. At that point, she’d been filming for seven years. Ms. Robertson intends never to stop filming “Five Year Diary”, the reporter writes. What I’d like, Robertson says, is to be at the end of my life, holding a camera in my hand, and when I die, well, that would be the last minute of the film.14 Instead, she stopped the film abruptly, 15 years after starting it and fifteen years before her death – without ceremony, without summation, without resolution, which is how death arrives anyhow.
1. Interview with Scott MacDonald, in A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers by Scott MacDonald, University of California Press, 1992, pp. 206-219. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Anne Charlotte Robertson: Selections from the ‘Five Year Diary’, 28 May, Beef Bristol. 6. Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema 2. 7. ‘Anne Robertson’ Obituary, MetroWest Daily News, 19 September 2012 8. Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema 2 9. ‘A Tribute to Anne Charlotte Robertson, Film Diarist, 1949 — 2012’, Pleasure Dome (Online) 10. Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema 2 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Glenn Collins, ‘Slices of Life in a ‘Five Year Diary’’, The New York Times, 20 October 1988.
Kathryn Scanlan is the author of Aug 9—Fog, a work built from a found diary. Her writing has been published in NOON, Granta, and The Paris Review, and her collection of stories, The Dominant Animal, is forthcoming from Daunt Books in the UK and Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the US. She lives in Los Angeles.
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