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A retrospective of Robert Gardner's films was held at DOCSDF, Mexico City, October 1-4, 2008. About this experience, he writes, "Few film festivals in my long acquaintance with these occasions has left me (the day after) more exhilarated or more confident that the future of actuality filmmaking is in the hands of inspired and intelligent young men and women. It could be noted that Margaret Mead once suggested that we should not underestimate the possibility that a small group of inspired young people can change the world. I am hoping my encounter with such people in Mexico will prove her right."

Over a number of years Robert Gardner has found ways to film Octavio Paz as he went about Mexico City or traveled with Gardner to places such as Puebla and Monterrey. From these scattered and intermittent efforts to make a kind of open ended film about Paz, Gardner has produced a DVD that puts together all of the most interesting moments, or "vignettes," regarding this remarkable man. One of the sequences is an English subtitled uninterrupted reading in Spanish by Paz of his one of his most important poems: "Nocturno de San Ildefonso." This DVD, which is the only such set of encounters with Paz, will be available in 2008 at www.der.org.

Work is underway on Human Documents, a book showcasing the work of eight photographers - Kevin Bubriski, Robert Gardner, Christopher James, Susan Meiselas, Adelaide de Menil, Michael Rockefeller, James Tuckerman, and Alex Webb - to be published by Peabody Press Harvard University, Fall 2009.