Al RobbinsProject WorkChallengesRecommendationsMargaret MelloIntro to MIAPDecember 2, 2003Al RobbinsIntroductionIn October 2003, I went into Anthology Film Archives intending to inspect, identify and descriptively catalogue the Al Robbins collection. The collection is comprised of 99 reels of 16mm film, seven reels of 8mm, one reel of Super8, and two 1/4-inch open reel audio tapes. Under the direction of Andrew Lampert, the archivist at Anthology, I planned on putting each reel on rewinds and inspect for damage, adding leader and repairing bad splices as I went. I was to fill out Anthology’s “Film Inspection Report” (see attached) for each reel, carefully recording the condition and assigning an archive number, unique within the scope of the collection. After practicing splicing (a skill I hadn’t used in several years) on some scrap footage and receiving Andrew’s approval on my film handling abilities, I began to sort through the box containing the entire Robbins collection. It was at this point that we discovered the contents of the box were not what they had first appeared to be. Closer examination of the individual cans revealed that a vast majority of them were taped shut. Upon opening a few of the cans we found they contained film that had been exposed but left unprocessed. Assuming that the remaining unopened cans contain the same sort of material, there are a total of 80 unprocessed reels of 16mm in the Robbins collection. This discovery reduced the amount of inspection and cataloguing work I was able to do on the collection, but it is an exciting finding that raises a number of questions regarding Robbins work and archival practice in general. First of all, there is the obvious question of what footage might be contained on the reels. Are they from the same film if they are from a film at all? Were they shot at approximately the same time? Why were they never processed? Are the reels developable? If so, should they be developed? Where will the funding for this project come from? Who might find value in this footage? What could these films tell us about Robbins and his work? All of these questions have been raised during the course of this project. Unfortunately there are not always concrete answers, but I have gathered information that will hopefully shed some light on the value of this footage.Al RobbinsAllan Mitchell Robbins was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1938. He studied architecture and design at Southern Illinois University with Buckminster Fuller. In the mid to late 1960s Robbins began to work with film, producing the 40 minute, black and white film Gut Poem in 1969. The same year, Robbins produced the short films Sandy and Relativity. Cheetah, Robbins’ first of many video pieces, was produced in 1974. From this time on, Robbins became known for his innovative video works and gallery installations. In addition to film and video work, Robbins was a poet and published author. Al Robbins suffered a heart attack February 8, 1987, passing away at the age of 48. That year John Hanhardt, curator of film and video at the Whitney Museum, said of Robbins that his “work was very much on the leading edge. He was pushing, exploring this medium in a really innovative way.”The works of Al Robbins, from his short films to video installations to poetry, were often a visual mix of nature and kinetic energy. Most of the descriptions I found of Robbins’ works were of the video installations he completed in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. For instance in a 1982 press release for the installation of “catch // the speed of shiver” says “the work defines a space of pure kineticism. Its materials are video images of the fundamental units of the natural world – water, air, plant and animal forms. That matter is energy, and energy is light, is expressed in the videotapes.” The installation was reviewed in Afterimage and describes the “grainy black and white scenes of waves, motorized sea gulls acting like dive bombers, and Robbins running and leaping in space” as his “typical images.” As discussed below, the images found in the AnthologyRobbins collection are similar to these descriptions, showing that there was a continuity in style and subject matter from his early film work in the 1960s through his video work of the 1980s.Project WorkI completed inspection, repair, and descriptive cataloguing on 15 reels of 16mm, 6reels of 8mm, and on one reel of Super8 film. For each reel I assigned an archival number, put the film on a core, added leader to the head and tail, counted and repaired thesplices, and identified the edge code. I recorded the condition of each reel by noting the amount of damage from emulsion and base scratching, dirt and grease, warping, perforation stretching or tearing, and shrinkage of the film. I also recorded any information that might be included on the original can or reel and assigned a descriptive title if there was no label. The amount of time spent on each reel varied greatly from a few minutes to an hour, as some were very short and had little damage, while others were longer and had numerous splices to be removed, cleaned and redone. Much of the 16mm film contained black and white images such as landscapes of hills, leaves, and water. There were also several reels with a young woman, and others of purely abstract images 2and patterns. None of the 16mm reels were labeled with titles, excluding one which had what appeared to be “Sawdy Print” written on the can. I have since discovered reference to Sandy, one of Robbins’ short films from the time period that the footage is from. I believe that this footage is a part of this film. The 8mm and Super8 films were in color, seemed to be home movies and most often did include titles, such as “Chicago” and “Marcy at Bahia.” ChallengesThe search for biographical information and a film/videography on Al Robbins proved to be a rather difficult task. A search of local library and Internet databases turnedup very few sources outside of obituaries in publications such as Variety and The New York Times. There was one article written posthumously in Millennium Film Journal. Even the archive on the Video History Project (www.experimentaltvcenter.org) was disappointing as it only had five “matches,” none of which proved helpful for the purposes of this project. In stark contrast, video artist Nam June Paik, who it has