If you’ve known where to look, we Bostonians have been privy over the past several years to a prolific supply of homegrown cinematic art from Robert Todd, Associate Professor in the Visual Media Arts Department of Emerson College. Regarded as a treasure amongst a fortunate bunch of adventurous Boston film students, Todd, who shoots almost entirely on celluloid, rarely puts a human face in frame, and has never met a furry creature or leafy green he didn’t feel compelled to photograph, has amassed a body of work that stands heroically against current technological and stylistic trends in both mainstream and avant-garde filmmaking. He often shoots in and around his Jamaica Plain residence, filming mundane happenings and natural phenomena in bright sunlight, but his cinema nonetheless feels part of another world – an alien atmosphere built of familiar textures made foreign and subtle shifts of light. There’s no better way to get acquainted with Todd’s work than in the very environment he so radically reconfigures, and as such this screening of Todd’s latest film, Echo-Systems (with a live score by NY-based Ai Isshiki), in the Norman B. Leventhal Park of Boston’s Financial District is a no-brainer. – Carson Lund

www.bostonviewfinder.com

echosystems excerpt from Robert Todd on Vimeo.