Date: 2006
Publishes THE IMPULSE TO PRESERVE: Reflections of a Filmmaker (THE OTHER PRESS NYC). Exhibition of photographs at the Nelson Hancock Gallery in Brooklyn NY. Showings of FOREST OF BLISS, RIVERS OF SAND & DEAD BIRDS at the Museum of Modern Art NY Film Preservation Festival. Guest of Maine Film Festival & Joanneum Exhibition Ferstengreber Graz 2006 Austria.

See EXCERPT FROM A CONVERSATION BETWEEN PHILLIP LOPATE AND ROBERT GARDNER in the Donnell Library Fall 2006 below.

EXCERPT FROM A CONVERSATION BETWEEN PHILLIP LOPATE AND ROBERT GARDNER in the Donnell Library Fall 2006

Lopate: Why does the marginal interest you so much?  As soon as a group starts to enter the mainstream, you start to get dismayed saying: “maybe this is a little worn down, is this really interesting, is this going to be filmic, will it yield a story?”

Gardner: Here again is the war between being either the conscientious social scientist or the thoughtful observer, a person with a more  nuanced and subjective eye. For me, the marginal fall into some sort of relief and that way become more visible. I also feel strongly this is an opportunity to say something about ourselves.

Lopate: You said at one point that you experienced yourself as a refugee, and maybe that's why you were interested in people who are on the margins.  Why did you experience yourself as a refugee? Where did this refugee conscience come from?

Gardner: Do you mean what was I running away from?

Lopate: Yes what were you running away from? That's part of it. That's a good question.

Gardner : To begin I think I was born a melancholy person and always felt that film had a melancholy way of looking at the world.  I also thought, if I stayed at home, I might not be able to find or express the kinds of melancholy I thought I could in a culture I was less familiar with.

Lopate: Why do you think filmmaking is intrinsically melancholy?

Gardner: I think the main reason is that there's something I call ‘then' and ‘now'. Here you and I are in ‘now'; we are experiencing each other 'now'. The 'now', as a matter of fact, is the moment of experience, but the ‘now' is also a sliding into ‘then' at which point the 'now' is forever gone but film can capture it and remind us of its fate

I think that is melancholic.