Anne Charlotte Robertson, Selections from the Five Year Diary

Begun in the early 1980s and running to over thirty eight hours of
Super 8 film, Anne Charlotte Robertson’s Five Year Diary stands as one
of the major works of diary film-making. The films are an intimate and
exhaustively narrated chronicle of her daily life in Framingham,
Massachusetts and her battles with depression, paranoia, and
borderline schizophrenia. Over the course of the Diary, Robertson
unflinchingly documents nervous breakdowns and hospitalisations, her
obsessive crush on Doctor Who actor Tom Baker, her battles with
weight, the side effects of prescription medication and the death of
her three-year-old niece, Emily. Though often painfully raw and
emotional the diary is not entirely bleak but leavened with
self-awareness and humour it becomes a redemptive form of self-therapy
which for Robertson ultimately tells ‘the story of a mind’s survival.’
Originally curated by Benjamin Cook & Barbara Rodriguez Muñoz for
Anxiety 2014. Films presented courtesy of Harvard Film Archive.
Introduced by Benjamin Cook, Director of LUX.