Five Year Diary Reels 22, 23 & 80

Robertson’s diary project offers an intimate and exhaustively narrated chronicle of her daily life in Framingham, Massachusetts, with her battles with mental illness as the dominant leitmotif. 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.
Two consecutive reels date from 1982, a third from 1994. Although the content is often uncomfortably confrontational, there are also many moments of sheer poetry in the way the trained filmmaker handles her Super-8 camera. In the end, the diary has proven a redemptive form of self-therapy which for Robertson ultimately tells ‘the story of a mind’s survival.’ Restored by the Harvard Film Archive, presentation in collaboration with LUX London.