About
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 the 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), an energetic mixed media film capturing a piece of Washington, D.C. history and the confluences of punk music, neighborhoods, and family and Sickies Making Films (2019), an investigation of early film censorship and cinema’s battle for First Amendment protection. His other films include, Diagram for Delinquents (2014), a deep dive into the work of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham and the comic book panic of the 1940’s and ‘50s, which has played at various comic book conventions including Wizard World and the San Diego Comic Con, Goodwill: The Flight of Emilio Carranza (2007), and De Luxe: The Tale of Blue Comet (2010). Goodwill was screened as part of the Smithsonian Institute exhibition: "Our Journeys/Our Stories: Portraits of Latino Achievement at the New Jersey Historical Society", has won “Best Homegrown Documentary Feature” at the 2008 Garden State Film Festival, and in 2009 received Mexico’s Lindbergh-Carranza International Goodwill Award as a “Messenger of Peace.” 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). His is currently in production on a new documentary film: Chambers of MUON (2025).