Citizen Cinema Presents the 15,000

WE ARE THE “DEPENDENT” independents

We spend every day pursuing a common goal, the creation of independent film. Now we want to explore new possibilities for sharing this experience with you, the 15,000

When I think of the billions of media dollars spent on propounding the obvious, dissecting the banal and faking deep thought in shallow water, I acknowledge the human need for distraction. I sit in front of the TV watching the Tour de France. Here is a spectacle I am riveted by. The peloton. How fathom it? Everyone clutched together like overshoes in a summer closet. Then someone breaks out of the pack and gets 8 minutes ahead. Freedom! The rebel spirit moves out of the sweating mass. But the grinding herd pushes on like an inevitable cancer, consuming the stolen distance, and metastasizing the impudent clod who thought he could go it alone. Fascinating. But I don’t know why. Why do I sit there giving my attention to grown men riding bicycles through France?

Well for one thing it’s easy. It’s idle. It takes away from the time you must spend in dread, confusion, and misgiving. It’s palliative. It’s a reward for having made it through one more day. Living is much harder. You have to concentrate on real consequences. If you don’t pay your bills on time, they call you. If you miss a payment, anonymous pirate scribes give you the Black Spot and your credit rating collapses. You could be the kindest, most responsible person on earth. But without credit, you can’t be trusted. You can’t rent a car. You can’t use an ATM. Angel of empathy, you are out of step with the reigning zeitgeist.

Harder yet, at least for me, is film production. When I direct a film I get balled into a black fist of concentration. Production is the closest thing in cinema to tight rope walking. You become a pyramid of Wallendas high above flat, adamantine asphalt. A net? What are you, a pentecostal? Nets are for people who believe in heaven. Film production can’t be endured if you think you have a chance at salvation.

When you write a script you can step out for a coffee. When you’re raising money you can go to a movie and sit in the dark, transported for a moment, before bright sunlight on the pavement shatters the reverie. In editing, you’re in a dark room with the illusion of choice. But in production you become a paranoid discerner of qualities. A tax collector of human properties, terrified your books won’t balance. You are a crazed quality control bureaucrat trying to legislate human sentiment. In your rabbit warren of fertile surmise, you see the population of fast twitch aesthetic muscles transmute off exponential charts.

You are a wound. A gasp. A Volkswagen bus entered in the Daytona 500. How much more clever life is than your frail capacity to grasp it. A wondrous thing is a man. But an artist who presumes to know one is a mockery.

So my real work is hard, I think. No matter how clever I think I am, I see how little cleverness is required. But what IS required is a kind of transparent window into my deepest misgivings, my highest aspirations, my wildest surmises, my saddest requiems, my most triumphant thrills, my miserable peloton of failures. Because if I can’t touch these difficult, embarrassing and vulnerable insignias of my fear, my foolish pride, my absurd arrogance, my groveling repentance, then you can’t recognize your own and so I’ve done nothing for you as a catharsis seeker. But of course, as much as you want me to travel in these dangerous personal quagmires, you too are at home watching the Tour de France. You don’t really want to fight your way through my difficult road maps designed to depict the switchbacks on the mountain passes which inhabit your soul. You wish I’d leave you alone, at least during commercials.

So we sit eagerly perusing our bicycle race of assorted diversions from our real work. Which is? Well, each of us knows, but we’d rather not face it. At least not today. We know we should be finishing up our re-read of Moby Dick but are actually reading rotten reviews about movies better left unmade, let alone written about. Nothing new there I guess. The movie business is actually in service of this equivocating back slider we wish not to be, instead of the spiritual seeker we know we should become. Entertainment. The way out. When we know we should be looking for the way in. So we’re out there wondering again.

Rob Nilsson has made over 18 films as a true American Independent. Add part of this unique and powerful body of work to your library today VISIT THE STORE.

As you have seen we are upgrading our outreach. I hope you like Michael Edo Keane’s new format for the 15,000, and that you have taken a listen to our Citizen Cinema podcasts and gone up to citizencinema.net to read my blog about Hou Shiao-Hsien’s THREE TIMES. I’m about to write one about going to see Jean Shelton in A TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL, the first time this extraordinary actress has been on the stage in 30 years. We’re reaching out to provide more outlets for our growing library of feature films as well. We are now adding to our association with Koch Lorber, an association with EZTakes and with Lycos as business partners for Internet sales of our DVDs.

So… let me harangue you just a little on the subject of purchasing our work either from these commercial outlets or from our web site. To be honest, we probably charge more for our films than they do. That’s because we need the money to be able to continue with our mission: to transform American cinema into a medium for seekers and see-ers, those learning to feel, those avid to learn, anyone and everyone stretching out for experience which stretches the gestalt a little. We’re trying to get some unexpected quivers going. We’re trying to get you out of the multi-plex, and your mind out of the video game…make you lean and muscular of mind, and wild of heart. My belief is that if you don’t have our films, you don’t have American cinema. If you don’t spend a little time thinking about what we’re doing and why you’re losing out on an opportunity.

Surely you can see how bankrupt and trivial most of our artistic culture is today. But don’t stop there. Critique is God given, but sometimes too easy. Look to us. We have ways of thinking and seeing which could become contagious if you really see what we’re getting at. Don’t take my word for it. Buy our work and remember. It’s not there to flatter you nor is it designed to be easy and likeable or predictably lurid as is the fashion these days. It’s there to provide you opportunities to see the world from a particular angle. It’s fiction, but we’re not telling stories. Anyone can spin a yarn. We’re setting characters out into a world of situations and circumstances to observe what happens to them and to preserve that experience in a slowly setting amber of sights and sounds. Direct Action begins with a dramatic prediction, a human directive, a call to action and ends with a chance to observe the raw “miracles of the ordinary” made extraordinary by the attentive alchemy of editing. Take advantage of us. Buy our work and if you don’t find that it appeals, look at it again. It may take you awhile, but when you see why our films aren’t as easy to like, you may understand why they are harder to resist.

We Inhabit a Circle of Alliances Jacques Thelemaque and Diane Gaidry are people who fight the neo- Colonialist film business in LA. I guess the movie moguls are not even that “neo”. They’re pretty much spawn from the same old salmon run. Anyway, Jacques and Diane fight them on the beaches with their organization The Filmmaker’s Alliance and in the fields and in the streets with their movies. Jacques directs and Diane is featured in their first feature:

THE DOGWALKER, which opened in the Bay Area on Aug. 11 at the Opera Plaza in San Francisco, the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, and at the Shattuck in Berkeley. Please come out and see this film! Then make sure you see their short collaboration TRANSACTION, my candidate for best short film of the year. Incidentally Diane is one of the leads in NEED, 9 @ Night film #7. She’s a beautiful actress, a staunch activist and a stalwart producer. You’ll be able to see her soon in the completed 9 @ Night series. We’re not that far away now! Stay tuned for further news on our progress.

R.N.

CITIZEN CINEMA podcast #3 will feature an interview with Jacques and Diane. We will discuss Filmmakers Alliance, the DOGWALKER as well as their unique grassroots distribution process. You’ll be able to hear it on our citizen cinema blog or at Apple’s ITunes thedogwalkerfilm.com�