Forsaken Fragments

by Robert Gardner

“What I am calling Forsaken Fragments are filmmaking projects I had for some reason suspended and never taken to a finished state. It was not because they were unworthy of further effort but because something intervened to distract me.” – Robert Gardner

In 2010, Robert Gardner began presenting these “fragments” in various forms at Bard College, the Harvard Film Archive, Light Industry and at venues including New York’s Film Forum, as part of the retrospective Robert Gardner: Artist/Ethnographer.

TIDE (1966)
In the late sixties I picked up my seldom used Arri 35mm camera and set off for the famous tidal flats of Nova Scotia. This fragment is of an elderly farmer who fished a weir using his horse and carriage to go out to it with the ebbing time and home with the incoming tide. I thought I saw a nice structure for a film that even included the element of chase, that old standby of film narrative. Would the carriage get home before being engulfed by the incoming tide, would the fog appear and obscure all points of reference?

CREATURES OF PAIN (1968)
In 1967 I was hoping to make a film about sheepherders in Nigeria. Civil War intervened and I had to be content with a few days attending a ritual called “sharo” in a small village near Kano. It qualified as a true ‘ordeal’, a contest of endurance to pain.

HEALING (1978)
I went to Ladakh in the vain search for a shaman. What I found was a species of Buddhist healing that involved trance and a variety of magical tricks of the healing trade.

SALT (1968)
One of my filmic interests in Ethiopia was to see and film the salt trade between the Highlands and the Dallol Depression, a wondrous environment of unbearable heat and intense color. I managed a start only and these are the bits that emerged.

POLICEMAN (1973)
Early in the seventies I was involved in the programming of a ABC affiliate TV station in Boston (Channel 5). I was given the opportunity to make what I called “non commercials” to be shown between programs just like a conventional advertisement but consisting instead of a 60 second look at a commonplace social activity. Policeman was one of several such “non commercials” that aired on this station to many peoples’ astonishment.

THE OLD LADY AKA: A HUMAN DOCUMENT (1958)
The only film except for helping John Marshall with The Hunters that I did when I went to the Kalahari in 1957. I became entranced by an old lady about whom I photographed and made this little film.

IT COULD BE GOOD, IT COULD BE BAD (FLYING IN CHILE) (1997)
Bob Fulton asked me to join him to do aerial photography in the Southern Chilean Andes. We rigged microphones to record what we were saying to each other as we flew among these extraordinary formations.

HAULING SHARKS (1988)
The coastal Danakil in Northeastern Ethiopia have found an environmentally suitable way of life netting sharks far out to sea which they export to the south Arabian states.

LOBSTERMAN (1973)
While active in the programming of ABC affiliate Channel 5 in Boston, Gardner was permitted to make a few short one-minute vignettes illustrating the working lives of relatively ordinary people. These vignettes were meant to be used by the TV station as ‘non commercials’ or unexpected looks at ordinary lives.

FARMER (1973)
While active in the programming of ABC affiliate Channel 5 in Boston, Gardner was permitted to make a few short one-minute vignettes illustrating the working lives of relatively ordinary people. These vignettes were meant to be used by the TV station as ‘non commercials’ or unexpected looks at ordinary lives.

SUPPLICATING WOMEN (1985)
While shooting in Benares for Forest of Bliss, I stumbled upon a temple visited by women who came to it with a variety of ailments including love sickness and problems with their families. This fragment begins to indicate the extent of their despair.

LIFE KEEPS ON PASSING (1985)
One of my thoughts while shooting Forest of Bliss was to see and hear what poets might have to say about their surroundings. These scenes recount some of their thoughts.