Flight Paths by Robert Todd.

The Underground Film Journal mourns the passing of prolific experimental filmmaker Robert Todd, who passed away on August 18, 2018.

Todd was Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. During his lifetime, he produced an extraordinary body of work in the form of short, experimental films that primarily captured his environment in minute and poetic detail. Many of these films are available to view on Vimeo.

While the Journal never had any personal contact with Todd, his name has appeared dozens of times in the underground film festival lineups the site posted between 2006 and 2015. However, Todd had been making films since the early 1990s. On February 23, 1999, his film Speak: When There Are No Words screened at the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema in New York City.

Although Todd was based in New England, he received several accolades in Chicago, Illinois. In 2006, his film In Loving Memory won the Best Documentary Short at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Then, in 2010, Golden Hour won an Honorable Mention at the same festival. Also, a year earlier, Chicago Filmmakers hosted a screening of new films.

Other award winning films

Morning Glory at the 2011 Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival in Chicago.

Undergrowth and Within at the 2012 Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Master Plan at the 2012 Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Cove at the 2013 Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival.

Short at the 2014 Milwaukee Underground Film Festival.

And in 2014, he served as a Juror at the 2014 Haverhill Experimental Film Festival

Todd was a beloved and influential figure in the experimental and underground film scenes, and his passing is an enormous loss to the community of filmmakers and film fans.