A Breakdown (and) after the Mental Hospital
Anne Charlotte Robertson
»Roll 23 of my Five Year Diary chronicles the period from 1 September to 13 December 1982. It describes a paranoid manic nervous breakdown, a stay in a psychiatric clinic and the subsequent recovery. The sound comes from tapes recorded during the breakdown and from a therapy session secretly filmed. The second soundtrack contains passages from 1991. «
– Anne Charlotte Robertson
Film programme Diary Film Excess – Homage to Anne Charlotte Robertson
Anne Charlotte Robertson
Anne Charlotte Robertson was a Super 8 film-maker and diarist who lived in Framingham, Massachusetts. She began making films in the mid-1970s as an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and earned her MFA at the Massachusetts College of Art. Her main work is the 38-hour opus Five Year Diary which she began in 1981 and kept for over five years. Each episode of the diary, spanning varying numbers of days, is 27 minutes long (approximately eight camera rolls) and the diary comprises 84 reels. In addition to the Five Year Diary, she also made over 30 other short films.
Films by Anne Charlotte Robertson (Selection)
A Short Affair (and) Going Crazy 1982/1996 | A Breakdown (and) after the Mental Hospital 1982/1991 | Apologies 1983–1990 | Locomotion 1981
