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Sundance abuzz about bee film

Filmmaker from Orange gets a jump start with his first film, screened at Sundance

Date published: 1/29/2009

By Rob Hedelt

FOR MANY a filmmaker, having work chosen to be screened at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival is the highlight of a long, distinguished career.

For Richard Knox Robinson of Orange, it was just the beginning.

His first major film, "The Beekeepers," was one of a few short films to be chosen in the coveted, cutting-edge "New Frontiers" segment of the internationally known festival that wrapped up last week in Park City, Utah.

Robinson, a photographer who has worked for publications ranging from The Washington Post to Smithsonian magazine, made what he calls an artistic, experimental film that blends the history and Zen of bee-keeping with the crisis posed by a malady called Colony Collapse Disorder that's decimating hives around the globe.

Not bad for a student who used "The Beekeepers" as his thesis in his filmmaking graduate studies program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

"I went to grad school essentially trying to find a new way to do a documentary," said Robinson from the impressive home in downtown Orange he and his wife created from a former commercial space. "With this validation from Sundance, I feel like I'm now really ready to expand and learn how to work with this model."

The model, which some might call edgy, uses intentional video and audio distortion, comically dated archival footage, simple narration and manipulation of images for artistic purposes.

For example, he bracketed an interview with David Hackenberg, a beekeeper who discovered CCD, with the image of a TV set, then layered it with audio and video static.

The 28-minute color film, shot digitally, also includes a choppy video countdown, Ambrosian chants and quotes from Virgil and Aristophanes.

It has metaphor and poetry mixed with scientific fact and graphically heightened images to underscore the fact that bees have become the "canaries in the coal mine."

The difference in the two metaphors--canaries vs. bees--is that we can't simply choose not to go into the coal mine.

"It's the whole planet, and what's affecting the bees today may be affecting us tomorrow," said Robinson.

The idea for the film came from his own beekeeping and an article he read about CCD.

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Date published: 1/29/2009