Robert Gardner (anthropologist)

Robert Grosvenor Gardner (November 5, 1925 – June 21, 2014) was an American academic, anthropologist, and documentary filmmaker who was the Director of the Film Study Center at Harvard University from 1957 to 1997. Starting in 1950s, he is known for his work in the field of visual anthropology and films like Dead Birds, and Forest of Bliss. In 2011, a retrospective of his work was held at Film Forum, New York.^[1]

Biography

He was the sixth child and third son, born in the home of his grandmother Isabella Stewart Gardner.^[2] He was a cousin of poet Robert Lowell.^[3]

After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1947, he became an assistant to the founder of the Byzantine Institute of America, Thomas Whittemore at Harvard's Fogg Museum. This led to travels to Anatolia, Fayum and London working with Coptic textiles and restoring Byzantine art Next, he started teaching medieval art and history at the College of Puget Sound in Washington state. Here, he took to writings of anthropologist Ruth Benedict and he ended up post doing MA in anthropology from Harvard. It was during his graduation period that he took part in an expedition on Kalahari Desert Bushmen, for which he took photographs, films and carried out elementary research work. Thereafter he founded The Film Study Center, a production and research unit at the Peabody Museum at Harvard in 1957. Here it made documentary films till he left the centre in 1997.^[4]

He lived in Cambridge, MA with wife, Adele Pressman, a psychiatrist, and two children Caleb and Noah Gardner.^[4]

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology now gives the Harvard University's 'Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography' worth $US50,000 ^[5]

Filmography

• Blunden Harbour (1951)
• Dances of the Kwakiutl (1951)
• Mark Tobey (1952)
• The Hunters (1957)
• Marathon (1964)
• Dead Birds (1965)
• Screening Room (1970s), series includes 9 films
• The Nuer (1971)
• Mark Tobey Abroad (1973)
• Rivers of Sand (1973)
• Altar of Fire (1976)
• Deep Hearts (1981)
• Sons of Shiva (1985)
• Forest of Bliss (1986)
• Ika Hands (1988)
• Dancing With Miklos (1993)
• Passenger (1998)
• Scully in Malaga (1998)
• Good to Pull (Bon a Tirer) (2000)

Related filmmakers

• Tim Asch
• John Marshall

Bibliography

• Gardner, Robert. 2006. The Impulse to Preserve: Reflections of a Filmmaker. Other Press.
• The Cinema of Robert Gardner, by Ilisa Barbash, Lucien Taylor. Berg, 2007. ISBN 1845207742.
• Harry Tomicek. 1991 Gardner Oesterreichisches Filmuseum. (In German)

References

• Robert Gardner Profile at The Film Study Center at Harvard University
• An Anthropological Critique Of The Films Of Robert Gardner at Temple University

• Ruby, Jay. Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2000.
• Heider, Karl. Ethnographic Film. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978.
• Schmitz M. Norbert, Gupta, Susanne. "Robert Gardners "Forest of Bliss" - Dokumentarfilm als visuelle Poesie, UVK Konstanz, 2012. ISBN 978-3-86764-409-9

External links

• Robert Gardner website
• Robert Gardner at Harvard
• Revue Independencia
• Robert Gardner at the Internet Movie Database
• Robert Gardner at AllMovie