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PALIMPSEST by Robert A. Emmons Jr. | USA (2024)
Palimpsest is an interactive documentary that traces childhood fear and anxiety from the Cold War to school shootings in America, while along the way connecting Archimedes, Choose Your Adventure books, Baseball, Ray Bradbury, Charles Dickens, Peter Pan, John Fahey, Turtles, and every demographic cohort from The Greatest Generation to Gen Z. Palimpsest scrapes at this messy history in an attempt to reveal causes and solutions for one of America’s greatest public health epidemics.
Bio
Robert A. Emmons Jr. is a documentary filmmaker, video essayist, and Associate Teaching Professor of Filmmaking in the Department of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts at Rutgers University-Camden. From 2016-2020 he was the co-founding Associate Director of the Digital Studies Center. He recently completed a tetralogy: Palimpsest (2024), an online interactive documentary, Weird as it is (2024), Grimmness (2024), and Game of Nim (2023); all of which investigate violence and discord in America in novel formats. Emmons has collaborated on two documentaries with partner Joe Tropea: Fugazi’s Barber (2021), and Sickies Making Films (2019), His other docs include, Diagram for Delinquents (2014), De Luxe: The Tale of Blue Comet (2010), and Goodwill: The Flight of Emilio Carranza (2007). His non-fiction video essays have been screened at conferences and symposia around the globe and include X9: CHØOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE (2022), ChiroMANIA (2018), Fake News (2018), 1 13 5 18 18 25 11 1: An Adaptation of Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse (2016), and Social Media Narrative (2016). He is currently in production on a new documentary film: Chambers of MUON (2025).
Pebbles Underground is focused on showcasing and promoting experimental, avant-garde, underground, and no-to-low budget projects by artist-humans from all over the world. Absurd, uncanny, witty, humorous, slow-video – all are welcomed, and loved.
Pebbles Underground is an independent project not funded by any government or corporation, and we intend to keep it that way. Main source of funding is personal donations from humans organizing the project, who are artists themselves, and the main drive of the project is formed by the energy and involvement of the organizers, and the public.
