A unique opportunity to see a collection of works by Robert Todd who will be in person at the screening.

Robert Todd has been working in and teaching film production since 1989, producing over twenty short pieces in various formats. Since 1985 he has been working as a painter, musician, and editor/sound designer on experimental, narrative and documentary films and videos. Robert's films have been screened at the festivals around the world and received a number of awards including Ann Arbor Film Festival Old Peculiar Award, New England Film Festival Director's Choice Award, Utah Film Festival Best Documentary Award and others. He holds a Masters Degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Family History 6.5min, 16mm, 1995

The filmmaker rushes to build his sandcastle. As the shoreline encroaches, the sandy ramparts defiantly fill the frame. The granules shift, revealing an old man floating amidst the sea of stories. As a background, the moon rises to find its eclipse, carrying with it the tide. "Family History" is an audio-visual representation of living legacy, based on my discovery of a cassette tape of my great-grandfather's narration of the family tree. True to my own experience of trying to divine my own place within my family's somewhat cryptically conveyed traditional expectations, the one-hour tape that he made was blank for 55 minutes until the end approached and he finally turned on the microphone. Of course by then, the batteries on his ancient machine were dying, and the audio imageslipped into chaos, becoming as impenetrable to me as the content of the story itself.

Fisherman: A Birthday Wish 5.5min, 16mm, 1999

Our romantic image of fishing and fish-culture is put to the test in this pre-dawn saga aboard "the Osprey".

WAIT 7.5min, 16mm, 2000

The dream of a life apart from others, and the accompanying obsession with them, has led to this "document" of an artistic process that posits the nature and virtues of visual freedom in family/self portraiture.

Fable: I want the world, clean 15.5min, 16mm, 1999

Fable: I Want the World Clean Musing on the violence we do to the world and our histories by trying to rid them of impurities, this fantastic "tale" centers on a family's house passed down through five generations.

Speak: When There are No Words 7min, 16mm, 1997

A friend's highly intelligent seven-year-old son can utter sounds, but they are not intelligible as words. As a visual artist, I am aware of my own world as primarily reveling in an internal space of "not- words". In fact I have trouble generating words that match the richness and strangeness of thought. I made this short film in sympathy with his state of affairs: as an audio-visual portrayal of the mind floating in a world without linguistic characterization or speech. It is about the birth, the formation of language in a world of other, loving, caring, different human beings that we find as a family.

CLIP:4000f. 3min 10sec, 16mm, 2001

Clip A sequence of 10 images presented in 10 groups of 400 alternating frames. The primary image of a bird is gradually disfigured by the successive introduction of competing imagery, yet the overall field seems to have its own life.