Robert Gardner

Instructions for a variety of projects and experiments related to solar, thermal, electrical, kinetic, and potential energy.

Deep Hearts is a film about the Bororo Fulani, a nomadic society located in the central portion of the Niger Republic of Africa. The title is a reference to an important aspect of these people's thought and demeanor.The Bororo are immensely beautiful. They are also extremely envious of each other's looks. This envy accounts for their truly suspicious nature; one which leads quickly to feelings of fear. They are particularly fearful of being 'devoured'...

Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story brings to life the story of a woman’s extraordinary courage, tested in the crucible of Nazi-occupied Paris. With an American mother and Indian Muslim father, Noor Inayat Khan was an extremely unusual British agent, and her life spent growing up in a Sufi center of learning in Paris seemed an unlikely preparation for the dangerous work to come. Yet it was in this place of universal peace and contemplation...

The Nuer call themselves Naath. Only their immediate neighbors, the Dinka, Shilluk and Arabs, call them Nuer. Most foreigners, which includes those with whom the Nuer neither fought nor traded, are called Bar which means 'almost entirely cattleless'.

Sons of Shiva is a sustained attempt to film a four-day ceremony concerned with the worship of Shiva. Devotees of the God Shiva are shown from the initial taking of the Sacred Thread through gradually intensifying action to a culmination in a variety of ascetic and self denying practices.

In the highlands of Northern Columbia the Ika live a strenuous and isolated life, economically dependent on small gardens and a handful of domestic animals. They are thought to be descendants of the Maya who fled from the turmoil of Central American High Civilizations warring states to the remote valleys of Colombias Sierra Nevadas.

Serpent Mother is about devotion to the Goddess of Snakes and the importance of divine female power in West Bengal Indian life. The film's focus is the Jhapan Festival, the great celebration of snakes.

Robert Gardner, then a graduate student of Anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle, went to Blunden Harbour to research a major film project on the Kwakiutl about whom Ruth Benedict had written so eloquently. The larger work was never done and this small film remains one of the few authentic accounts of this once majestic people.

The film explores the world's first major opinion poll, conducted by the Gallup organization. It asked Muslims from Indonesia to South Asia, to the Middle East, as well as minority communities in the US and Europe, what they thought about issues such as Gender Equality, Terrorism, and Democracy. It presented by Islamic scholars and the Gallup members themselves who give context and try to provide explanations for the results.

Ricky Leacock visited Screening Room on June 15, 1973, with Al Mecklenburg and Jon Rosenfeld. He demonstrates super-8 sync technology and screens excerpts from his films Republicans: The New Breed and Queens of Apollo, as well as rare footage of Indira Ghandi.