Government is a four ring circus, each ring defined by a word beginning with P: Power, Protection, Pride and Profit. Sad as this might sound we would never want to add Purity as the fifth P. It’s the Pure I’m most afraid of. Almost as much as the Sure.  Beware the “V word” too. Virtue attends every inquisition, every bloody purge. Yes, we should advocate truthfulness, empathy, courage, honesty and other “virtues” but these are not ends in themselves. How could they be?

Politicians are circus performers and we are the animals. And in their four Rings our political figures perform many merry acts with and upon us, while regaling us with “truths” mostly lacking in empirical proof. When they are seeking election, they’ll say almost anything with the authority of worldly savants possessed of special understanding. We listen to them pontificate and judge their obvious distortions, skeptical, but then, who else do we have? When they are elected they can’t act nearly as irresponsibly because now they are engaged in the actual work of governance. And here, as greedy, petty, and venal as they may be, they need to be listened to.

Because it is through a process of intense debate with opposing peers that we get the best that can be gotten from the political process. If we were to toss aside all the prevaricators and ask for the coming of the new Akhenaten who would toss out all uncertainty (and therefore all debate) in favor of sun worship, we would reap, eventually, the same as that all conquering poet. Disaster. His city deserted. His tomb desecrated. His memory besmirched. Like Lenin. Ghengis Khan. Xerxes. And as for Revolution as a means to achieve justice, which would you like to have lived through: Russian, Chinese, Cambodian… ? Luckier the American or even the French. But luck runs out and I don’t like the odds… or the body counts.

The only hedge we have against disaster is constant debate, constant struggle, constant warfare between competing notions, 1/4 of which will be too difficult for most to follow, 1/4 of which will be so self interested none of the opposition will support it, 1/4 of which will be criminally stupid, or insane, and 1/4 of which offers enough wiggle room for the kind of compromise which can actually benefit opposing sides. This is a hard ball game in a stadium with owners prepared to give out the signal to kill, maim and destroy if this compromise cannot be reached. Therefore, something as tenuous, mysterious, and poetic as truth, or virtue, or beauty can only be achieved outside the political realm, perhaps on the level of what we call Art, be that poetry, music, sport, dance, philosophy, literature, or whatever it is when we contemplate the wonders of the natural world.

I think it’s Eric Rohmer who said, “Life offers only exceptions.” In spite of all our language, laws, beliefs and rational decisions, life almost always turns out different than we expect. We write a Constitution, a Bill of Rights, and a whole host of laws. You’d think we might be able to have a social structure with these helpful guidelines alone. But we can’t. Every day in every town, county, state, and city, there are hundreds and thousands of trials before magistrates, juries, and judges requiring fallible humans to interpret human experience on the basis of law, but a law never flexible enough to cover all the human contradictions, paradoxes and “exceptions” certain to crop up.

Everything written must be interpreted on the basis of what people actually do. So this huge infrastructure of crime and punishment, of mercy and judgment, of sentences and acquittals, everyday grinds out decisions, some clear cut, some obfuscating, but all some sort of acknowledgement of compromises necessary because of the crazy prolixity of human need, desire, and belief. When law and what people do seem to jibe, perhaps because of common customs and long standing traditions, everything seems more simple.

But rarely is. In our democracy appeals can and do go on for years, leading us to understand that there are so many social, personal, religious, spiritual, ethical forces in play, that absolute certainty is impossible to attain. Sure a person may be guilty, but was he insane? Was he tortured, misled, confused, accused, molested, lost his capacity to reason? And who is to blame for that? And how much? And, since the problem is difficult to resolve, can aggrieved and accused reach an agreement out of court? Or plead diminished capacity? Or… pay blood money for the whole thing to be dropped?

An extraordinary Iranian film A SEPARATION, directed by Asghar Farhadi and winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, 2012 shows how the attempt to achieve justice can be extraordinarily painful and difficult when people come from different social classes and levels of education. A labyrinth with no easy exits. As an exercise I tried to write down its complex twists and turns.  After four pages, single spaced, I still could not re-construct everything. And this is after watching the film twice. But this should not stop anyone from going to see it. The plot of A SEPARATION is rare because its twists and turns are based on the human complexities mentioned above and creates a rambling blueprint for moral ambiguity and the interstices between truth and fiction where we spend most of our waking hours.

Most films with a lot of plot make few concessions to this kind of complexity. They ramble on assuming people only want suspense, mystery, a thrill here and there, some plot “oohs and aahs” and a conclusion. The tyros never tire of talking about stories needing a beginning, middle and end. But nothing has a beginning, middle and end. Everything in life is in flux, always changing, one form into another, a form into a color, into a contretemps of both, a Gaudi construct, a Chihuly flourish, a Mandelbrot mystery, commonplace, expected, unexpected.

Art which stops at “story” has stopped too soon. There are no stories out in the world. As adults we don’t live in stories. We live in circumstances which change and evolve, and are ourselves, changing, changeable creatures, wanting one thing one day and another thing another. When we were children stories were read to us. But now the opportunity for a truly poetic immersion in the ebb and flow of things beckons us. Unfortunately most of us don’t heed the call.

A SEPARATION is that rare film where plot can’t be put on a graph and parsed out by acts. It follows a precarious path of human need set against responsibility and social mores. It’s a hard film to summarize and makes us feel like we’re watching everything else going on around us which we can’t quite figure out.

Two types of Iranian families create the conflict. A modern family of some means, the husband, Nader (played by Peyman Moadi) works in a bank, the wife, Simin, (Leila Hatami), is a teacher, and both come into conflict with a traditional family when a caretaker for Nader’s father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi) a victim of Alzheimers, is needed. Razieh, a pregnant woman with a traditional Islamic background (Sareh Bayat) is hired and immediately a problem arises. She can’t let her husband, Hadjat (Shahab Hosseini) an unemployed cobbler who is currently in legal trouble due to his inability to pay an onerous debt, know she is working in a home with no other women present (Simin has left Nader and gone to live with her mother.)

Complications ensue when the grandfather wanders away and Razieh is hit by a car while trying to rescue him. She tells no one about the accident and later blames her employer, Nader, for a miscarriage, claiming he pushed her down some stairs. Legal problems result and Nader will be charged with murder if it can be proved he pushed Razieh while knowing she was pregnant. Hadjat feels obliged to avenge the death of his unborn child and is seen stalking Nader and Simin’s daughter, Termeh, (Sarina Farhadi). Blood money enters in. If the modern school girl, Termeh, is in danger of Hadjat’s revenge, it seems that tradition allows for monetary compensation to substitute for the “eye for an eye” solution.

The plot is rich in uncertainy. Razieh has told no one about her accident but is her failure to speak a “lie”? Did she miscarry because of the accident or because she was pushed by Nader? She says she isn’t sure. Nader admits he pushed her, but not hard enough to make her fall down the stairs, and claims he never knew that Razieh was pregnant, but later admits to Termeh that he overheard it.  But to admit that in court would mean being tried for murder, with no one left to care for her or her grandfather.  Would Termeh want that to happen as a consequence of the “truth”?

Termeh’s tutor, who knew the woman was pregnant, swears on the Qur’an to a magistrate that, based on the position of people in the room when the pregnancy was discussed, the husband could not have known Razieh was pregnant. But she later recants, possibly fearing for her own safety. Now Termeh, who has great respect for the truth, is the only available protection for her father, Nader, and she tells a lie in court to protect him.

Her mother, Simin, fails to tell Nader of a visit she has with Razieh who tells her she doesn’t want Simin’s family to offer blood money because, since she is not sure how she lost the child, she could be committing a sin which could have negative consequences for her own daughter. But Simin knows that if the blood money is not paid, Termeh will be in danger from Hadjat, and Nader will be required again, to prove his innocence in court. Here’s a potential impasse which seems beyond solution.

However, a meeting does take place between the two families. Nader is ready to make out a considerable check to the family of Razieh and Hadjat. This solution would cross the divide between two ways of life and save Nader from formal prosecution, save Termeh from fear of a revenge killing, help Hadjat pay back his debt, and allow everyone to go back to their own lives. It even appears that Razieh is ready to stay silent and to go along with this solution in spite of her fear of committing a sin.

However, Nader has not been told of Razieh’s reservations and of the meeting between her and Simin and, perhaps not realizing how precarious the situation is, commits the only error which could jeopardize the agreement. Insisting on being assured that he is in the right, in spite of being willing to pay the price for being wrong, he asks Razieh to swear on the Qur’an that he, Nader, caused the miscarriage. All he wants, as compensation for the money he feels he is being coerced to pay, is that Razieh, do the one thing she cannot do: swear on the Qur’an that something is true, which might not be. The fear of the sin trumps all worldly considerations.

People try to wiggle out of things. This is one of the conundrums the film explores. Customs which require strict adherence to codes are always difficult to honor and here, it seems no one wants to be a martyr to the truth. Razieh has caused a great deal of pain by not admitting she was hit by a car. And, on principal, she is opposed to doing anything which might be considered sinful by her traditional religious code. However, she has allowed the meeting to take place and so it seems that she will evade her moral dilemma by simply not saying anything. But when Nader needs to know that he’s paying the money for a literal truth, (which is, quite likely, actually a lie) rather than compromising with social demands which can’t be controverted, he assures the failure of that compromise.

Hadjat is amazed and shattered that Razieh‘s fundamentalist fear of a sin makes a worldly agreement, agreeable to all, impossible. Now Hadjat will be unable to pay his debt and, facing debtor’s prison or worse, he rushes out. The modern family walks to their car to find a rock thrown through the window, revenge on the man who was ready to write the check which would have solved all their problems. In the end two fundamentalist positions, one Eastern, traditional and based on religion, and one Western, liberal and based on reason, make it impossible for a compromise to be made which would have benefited all concerned.

This is the great achievement of A SEPARATION. It never says so, but it illustrates, with great subtlety, that the only really humane decision must always be a compromise. Absolute truth is absolute tyranny. Ideals show desirable moral and ethical positions, but they must be interpreted, made flexible by circumstance and human feelings, proving out the one human truth we’ve never been able to circumvent: to be human is to disagree. And disagreement must be kept short of the line which, once crossed, results in the mayhem and violence we see all around us, and which we are almost always powerless to prevent.

Life offers only exceptions. And I would say that the “just exceptions” we seek are best obtained in a system where everyone accepts the proposition that absolute truth is impossible to achieve, and where everyone accepts mediation as the only way to avoid chaos. And maybe we have that system in America where the burden of proof is on the state. We’re innocent until found guilty. Judges and juries make decisions. Right and wrong ones. Elections are won and lost. But time allows for new decisions, postponements, appeals and repeals. Even if there is insufficient variety in our two party system, even if there is racism, class struggle, gender and sexual conflict, leadership can, and does change, laws are repealed and new ones created and even if the whole unruly process seems something of a freak show, we have the world of Art and Nature to repair to when politics, law and government get it wrong.

Except that here we find an “exception” with terrible consequences.  Today everything and anything is ART. If enough so- called, and often self proclaimed, experts anoint and proclaim it so, however spuriously, it is SO. Which really means that nothing is Art. And so our real Masters are often ignored and their social power to instruct and delight is wasted.  Jerome Witkin, for example is the greatest living American painter you’ve never heard of. And his relative obscurity represents just one of many crimes committed today by the art establishment. And NATURE is severely threatened by our expanding economies and wasteful use of resources. EXCEPTIONS. Which prove the RULE.

So David and I began our usual free form with Pat. David didn’t like to judge things harshly. I was frequently in his face about art, cinema, politics… testing him, and myself. Why pursue anything less than the truth? Don’t make do with mediocrity. Hold up standards. Be provocative. Speak your point of view with passion. You might learn something by being wrong. My thought was, “Attack, defend, forgive”. David saw what I was talking about but he had an easier take on things. He was more willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.

But that night David was challenging Pat. He mimicked some of Pat’s ticks, one being a habit of massaging his left elbow as he expounded, bar fashion, inventing the idea just out of reach, looking for the elusive “Aha!” in full dress discursive mode.  He played with Pat a little, maybe because the subject was music and David had been at Sunshine Studio in Memphis, and had written songs recorded by Elvis Presley. What did Pat know about music? Or maybe we were talking about acting. I remember David saying that when he needed to discover the thread of a role, or the button to push for a particular feeling, he would just look straight ahead. He nodded to the bar, where a patron sat with his back to us. “It’s right there,” he said. And I intuited where he was going with that. It’s always around us. With calm, and fear in check, you can pull Stanislavski out of the phone book.

I don’t remember exactly where we went then, but David was putting a kink in Pat’s usual languid delivery, attacking, probing, kidding in a serious way. Pat was back on his heels, but hanging on. David was sharp that night and I watched him closely… and admired. Then he had to go but I stayed a while longer. Pat was quiet for a moment and then he said to me, “That man is a force of nature.”

I was surprised. David was a friend I hadn’t thought of in that way. We were not into hyperbole when it came to assessing mutual strengths and weaknesses. But we weren’t afraid to get into it.  If I thought he was prone to exaggerate from time to time, he thought I was too stoic and understated. Sometimes his New Age proclivities made me squirm. He thought I might want to loosen up a little and join the 21st Century. Then too he hadn’t been that well.  He had recently overcome cancer and was struggling with a thyroid problem. His morale had been a bit shaky of late. Family problems. Professional doubts. The usual. “That man is a force of nature.” I thought about it.

David had been a member of the U.S. Rugby Team. When he was relaxed and took his time, he was an actor of rare sensibility. He was well known for his lead role in Wes Craven’s LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and an important figure in that genre. I remember being shocked when he came in to read for THE STEPPES. He showed us a quiet sensitivity and inventive word play I hadn’t seen before. I liked his role in GO TOGETHER, the last of the 9 @ Night movies, but he reached a different level the day we cast him in a major role as Olek in THE STEPPES.  That film played in the Perspectives Competition at the Moscow International Film Festival this year and was nominated for all the prizes at the Syracuse International where David won a posthumous Jury Citation for his role. And then there was David’s music, good songs, admired by many and one, VAGABOND, I’ll never forget. I’ve used it in at least three movies. He sings it himself with a very tight band behind him and it is infectious. At any given moment, I can still hear it in my mind. It just keeps on tickling me.

Another thing: David grew up in Port Washington, John Cassavetes’ home town. As a young actor he met and talked with John in bars and probably had conversations like those we had with guys like Pat. I believe in bar culture. I think that if parliaments would meet in bars we’d be more likely to get rid of war. David was a good bar guy, always with that big grin, and a taste for the gab.

Last Thursday night was the opening of the Mill Valley Film Festival. We met there, as we always do, and David defended the film we had just seen, just as I slammed it. Our usual roles. True to form. And then I remembered what Pat had said. And I thought, “David’s got to hear this.” I reminded him of our last talk with Pat.  “And after you left, Pat was thinking, and then he looked at me and said, “That man is a force of nature.” David was startled. It had caught him at the right time and in the right spot. Who doesn’t want to get a message of admiration from a secret sharer in troubled times? And in that moment I saw him transform himself back into the man Pat had seen. There was a validation of what he had always believed. He WAS a force of nature and a guy in a bar had seen it, even if others, sometimes these days, had failed to.

On Saturday morning I was standing on the sidewalk in front of my house. Warm sun. A good start for a good day and I was waiting for a colleague and a breakfast meeting to raise money for our next movie, WOMAN 1. I took out my cell phone and saw that David had called me. I hit “reply” but it wasn’t David who answered. It was his son, Jesse. In tears. That night David had died of a massive heart attack.

Life is pleasant in our times. We have homes and cars and food. Good coffee, brew pubs, places to drink and congregate, big things for the big people, and little things for those not so big. It’s better here than in most places, and infinitely better than in the world’s hell holes… Somalia being the worst we currently know about. We beat ourselves up because we’re not perfect and because we’re the strongest nation in the world. And at times we go into countries, as if we owned them, to kill our enemies. Why? Because we can. And if anyone thinks they “would not” if they were “able to,” don’t believe them. If they demonstrate their virtue in real time, with real life risks, and surrounded by, the requisite level of threat, then their actions prove their good intentions. Hypocrisy is truly measured only in the world of events. Until you act, you’re only a talker. The mirror is the best window available when you’re sure the other guy is wrong. You’re the unshakeable revolutionary one day, and you’ve got a dacha on the Black Sea the next. Virtue and vice share the same condo.

But… we’re never safe. We’re next… although we’re never sure what number we’ve drawn. I know that mine is coming up. But until that day I’m going to continue to pursue the road indicated by the inscription in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. “Know thyself” is a good formula for avoiding the trap of absolute certainty and its next worst step… blaming the others. David and I went over all of this many times.  And we disagreed most of the time. And why not? A democracy is based on conflict and the importance of opposing views. Art is the only place where you hew to vision and conviction and never back down.

David was alive. And now he’s a memory. He was an optimist and a guy who knew how to be a good friend. His passions led him to lead a passionate life. And passion is the high road to agony and ecstasy, kisses and bruises, given and received.  I don’t think anyone comes out of a life well lived without the scars to prove it. And vivid memories of people left behind. But, “Attack, defend and forgive.” I’ll remember his friendship, generosity and talent. Luckily it will still be there in the songs and albums and films. A force of nature is protected by the Laws of Thermodynamics, as Peter Coyote said in his elegy for Graham Leggat. You can’t create a David Hess nor can you destroy him.  He’s just… there. Yes, in a different shape, but not one particle can be lost. That’s just the nature of things. Goodbye, comerado. If there’s a dimension we haven’t quite heard of yet, I’m sure we’ll meet up there one day. I’ll tell Pat what happened. He’ll be pulling on his elbow and… well, just remember what he said.

We just got word that our latest film THE STEPPES, featuring Irit Levi, David Hess and Marion Christian from the Tenderloin yGroup, Nancy Bower from the Berkeley Citizen Cinema workshop, Liz Taylor a new discovery from France and Derrick O’Connor from the Royal Shakespeare Company, BRAZIL and MONTY PYTHON has been selected to compete in the Perspectives Section of the Moscow International Film Festival later this month. This, along with the Moscow Nilsson Retrospective of five films: NORTHERN LIGHTS, HEAT AND SUNLIGHT, NEED, IMBUED and THE STEPPES makes this year’s Moscow fest a high point for us. Our deep gratitude to Kirill Razlogov and his programming staff for honoring us with these presentations.

THE STEPPES features actress/producer Irit Levi playing Miri, an aging Ukrainian woman stuck in the Odessa Hotel, an Tenderloin SRO she once ran with her husband. He was killed in a robbery and she is deep in depression when her niece Rachel (Nancy Bower) arrives from the East Coast, determined to drag her out of her doldrums. A fascination and repulsion towards food points back in time to the millions of Ukrainians who starved to death in Stalin’s Holodomor, 1932-33.

Several of us including the brilliant Mickey Freeman, long time Director of Cinematography (three of the five films were shot by him) and compadre during many cinema campaigns, will be going to Russia to attend our screenings. If any of you want to go, there’s still a little time. Our films are slated to play between June 29 - July 2.

Another important announcement. The Filmmakers Alliance of Los Angeles, headed up by an old comrade of mine, Jacques Thelemaque, has been supporting the efforts of up and coming filmmakers for many years. The Alliance is also the sponsor of the Nilsson Award, which I received in 2008 and now curate, a prize which acknowledges the struggle necessary to make cinema outside the high concept realms of Hollywood. The Alliance is mounting a very short (30 days) Kickstarter campaign the focus of which will be an ambitious new website which will greatly facilitate their work. I urge you to support this initiative. This is where you can donate.

(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/filmmakersalliance/the-greatest-filmmaking-website-ever-imagined-part)

This is where you can find out more about the Filmmakers Alliance and their important work.

http://www.filmmakersalliance.org/New_FA_Website.html

I hope you will be able to support The Filmmaker’s Alliance of Los Angeles’ mission to make cinema closer to the lives we actually lead rather than those depicted in the fantasyland versions of mainstream media.

On to Moscow. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Rob

Nilsson’s work—which John Cassavetes has called “beautiful, exciting, imaginative, unfamiliar and outside of that, very good”—has featured cinematography by San Francisco DP Mickey Freeman, and roles from actors such as Ron Perlman, Bruce Dern, Pam Grier, Stephen Lange and Robert Viharo. His films have been produced by David and Carol Richards, John Stout and San Francisco producers Michelle Allen, Marshall Spight, Beth LaDove and Steve and Hildy Burns, with music, sound cutting and mix by Al Nelson and the Noise Floor.

Four of the five Retrospective films are San Francisco productions and NORTHERN LIGHTS, shot in North Dakota, also features interiors shot on San Francisco locations. From 1992- 2005 Nilsson worked with his San Francisco Tenderloin Y Group, conducting acting classes and making feature films with the homeless, inner city residents, local actors and all comers. Nilsson Retrospectives and Lifetime Achievement awards include Mill Valley, Kansas City, St. Louis, Fargo, Syracuse, Yerevan in Armenia, and Silver Lake in Los Angeles. The Filmmaker’s Alliance of Los Angeles gave him their inaugural Nilsson Award in 2008 which Nilsson now curates annually.

“To be recognized in the land of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Chekov, Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel and my favorite director, Elem Klimov (COME AND SEE) is humbling to say the least,” says Nilsson, whose latest film WHAT HAPPENED HERE?—which he describes as “a road movie/essay about Leon Trotsky, virtue and political certainty”—will be his 30th feature film.

For more Information contact: rnilsson@robnilsson.com

Here are two of the new classes I’m teaching at Film Acting Bay Area, which meets at Expressions College, Emeryville, CA.  Join up and work with me, or tell your friends about it.  I’m also offering personal one on one sessions with directors, players. and writers. For those who can’t make it in person I’ll be available on phone or Skype.  Find the information you need for these sessions below.

I’ve also included a piece describing my realization that I could teach my method of directing to others.  Stay tuned and read what I discovered.

Buena fortuna for now.  Keep fighting for an Art of truth seeking, with vision, epiphany, emotion and intuition fully included.  The present day fakirs of Pop still reign, but they can’t last.  Our ever more complex world will eventually make it necessary for us to seek the cathartic value of the Arts once more.  I know I’ll continue to fight for it.

Rob

DIRECT ACTION CINEMA Workshop
for Actors & Directors
with Rob Nilsson

Rob Nilsson has made 30 feature-films and has won numerous international awards
including the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Prize at Sundance, the San Francisco Critics Circle Marlon Riggs Award and several Lifetime Achievement Awards. In June of this year, the Moscow Film Festival will hold a retrospective of his work.

QUOTES FROM PREVIOUS WORKSHOPS:

“Rob Nilsson’s Workshop was a transformative experience. It was inspiring and liberating to meet other directors and actors, to work, experiment, and create together, and to challenge our fears and limitations under Rob’s guidance.” - Josh Peterson: Writer-Director

“Rob’s charisma, knowledge, and experience has gone way beyond inspiring me. It has shaken my very core foundation, it has allowed me to free myself of my own mental blocks and fears, and get rid of any falseness that sometimes gets in the way in traditional methods of movie making.” - Tiziana Perinotti: Writer-Director

“It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this creatively energized!” - Arthur Vibert: Writer-Director

“Rob keeps it real. His style, his instruction, his direction is real. As an actress in his class, I felt free to express and that’s what it’s about. I was honored to learn from him.” - Taylor Brock: Actor

“What I discovered, then explored in Rob’s Workshop was beyond any film workshop that I had ever experienced: The truth of the human experience. I now use “Direct Action” approach to prepare and rehearse scripted work. I highly recommend Rob’s “Direct Action” Cinema Workshops.” - Micci Toliver: Actor

“Working with Rob is a pleasure. He is passionate without being pushy. He lets things unfold without forcing and being intrusive, pretty much what directing is all about.” - Marianne Shine: Actor

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Direct Action Cinema is a grass roots method for conceiving and producing contemporary dramatic feature films. Developed by director Rob Nilsson, its techniques have been practiced in his films which have won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and numerous other international awards.

In this 8-week class, we will screen films done with Direct Action techniques, discuss the underlying ideas behind them, and practice the acting and directing methods used in their production. Working in teams, we will conceive and shoot Direct Action scenes to provide first hand experience of the method (all equipment including digital cameras required for shooting the scenes will be provided).

All class-work will be recorded with digital cameras on thumbdrives for the workshop participants to review and keep.

Directors and Actors of all levels of experience can enroll. A sample of short-films & clips generated during the previous workshops can be seen at Videos.

Start date: April 28, 2011
Class time: Thursdays, 6:30 pm - 10:00 pm (8 classes on: April 28, May 5, 12, 19, 26, June 2, 9, 16)
Instructor: Rob Nilsson
Prerequisite: Rob Nilsson & Celik Kayalar’s approval at celik@filmactingbayarea.com and rnilsson@robnilsson.com
Tuition: Directors - $400; Actors - $300 (Payment Plans are available. Please inquire.)

NOTE: Class-size is limited to 6 Directors and 14 Actors.

ROB NILSSON OFFERS:  EXPRESSIVITY FOR THE ACTOR- a class for players (actors) to experience strong emotion, cathartic energy and powerful human connection.  A work out and tune up session for seasoned actors and a supplemental class for actors at all levels.  Exercises in relaxation, concentration and strong emotional commitment will be used to enhance confidence and to eliminate mental blocking.  Using the techniques of Direct Action, a system designed for the creation of dynamic cinema, we will work to enhance the actor’s natural gifts, encourage free and courageous performances and to eliminate  pre-conceptions, excessive rationality and fear of failure.  The goal is a player alive in the moment and fierce in the expression of all things human.

Sundays April/May at 3:00, Expressions College, Emeryville, CA- Three hour sessions for 8 successive weeks: $400.  Drop- ins allowed, $65/session. All acting levels welcome with teacher permission.  Contact: rnilsson@robnilsson.com

Director/Writer Rob Nilsson has made 30 feature films and has won numerous international awards including the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Prize at Sundance, the San Francisco Critics Circle Marlon Riggs Award and several Lifetime Achievement Awards. In June of this year the Moscow Film Festival will hold a retrospective of his work.

INDIVIDUAL COACHING:

Cannes and Sundance winning writer, director, actor Rob Nilsson is now available for individual coaching and consultations for actors, directors and filmmakers:  in person, via Skype or on the phone.  Contact: rnilsson@robnilsson.com for rates and times.

DIRECT ACTION

Available for sale: copies of the chapter in Rob Nilsson’s book in progress, WILD SURMISE, which includes his writing on the purposes and practices of Direct Action Cinema.   $25.00 e-mailed.  $35.00 regular mail.

THE NEW CLASSES
By Rob Nilsson

The new classes I’ve been teaching at Film Acting Bay Area have been eye opening.  I have been developing and refining my Direct Action filmmaking approach for many years and over the production of my last 25 films, but this is the first time I’ve tried to teach it to others.  It’s fascinating to see, first of all, that it works for other directors, and also, how various their approach is in using it.  I love it when I see a director, intent, prowling around the players as they improv their scene, directing the shooter with a gesture, a guiding hand, slipping in between lines to deliver a quick direction to players, involved in the way a musician is involved in a tight combo, everyone working for the emotional and dramatic music the system is designed to create.

I find that I am picking up new approaches by watching how others use the system.  It had not occurred to me how transferable this knowledge was until I stood back and watched.  And it’s gratifying to see how easily players fall into this groove as well, as if they had been doing it all their lives.  And they have.  Because this is a system which literally relies on the experience of a lifetime.  Players live out fictional lives in front of cameras, responding to language and action which allow them to invent a fresh and surprising scene using their own life choices and patterns.  And working close to the truth of natural instincts allows directors to create characters their players are literally born to play.  The process is interactive.  A story can be brought in to be developed and shaped working with players to refine and define, or it can be invented after observing what players do, and what they might best do.  The distance between writers and players is considerably diminished in this way.

Direct Action is a system which catches human behavior closer to the ground and  friendlier to the spontaneous reactions and capacities of players.  So much less effort and energy is wasted working this way, and much better material gathered for use in editing.  The more I see, the more opposed I am to teaching film acting by giving players scripts for roles which require so much attention to memorization that reality is sacrificed for orthodoxy.  Why give actors scenes from well known plays and screenplays which are far from their experience, and for which they’re almost always unsuited, when they can build drama directly from their own experience and develop a working sense of personal truth in a very fascinating act of transformation, being completely, and triumphantly, themselves.

The chameleon actor who seems to slip into an entirely different reality with each role,  the Stacy Keach, the Jon Voight the Gary Oldham, is a very rare breed anyway.  Most actors are unable to stray very far from their native ways of being and expressing themselves.  And this is how an audience wants its Robert DeNiro anyway.  Everyday we see critics mistake what they consider acting for that which is really just personal character, charisma, personal ability and charm.  Most aficianados feign horror at what they consider typecasting.  For me, and for the cinema generally, the very best casting is typecasting.  Caricatured roles are to be avoided like the plague.  But roles which come right out of the cauldrons of living experience are always the most convincing.

Another thing I’ve stressed in my classes is that cinema is as much about places as it is about players.  People in a classroom, for cinema, are people in a classroom, no matter if they are playing scenes from Henry IV Part one, or Waiting for Godot.  Whenever possible, if you’re in a classroom, play a scene from a classroom.  Or if the ultimate scene is to take place in a bar on Market St., do your back story rehearsals, wherever possible, in places native to them, and do the scene in a bar on Market St.

For example: in the class just completed I worked with four directors each of whom created and directed a scene for two to three players.  As a group we decided that the scenes being  developing separately should eventually converge and evolve into one.  The process evolved over 8 weeks, and at the end our fiction found us in an airport, with four groups of people stranded travelers and one group with a solution… a private jet owned by a company one of them worked for.  The plane was located in a small airport outside the bad weather zone and, for a fee, all four groups could take a shuttle bus there, board the plane and head for a hub where everyone could fly to their destination.

Well, we developed character back story with back story improvs in a classroom.  Cameras but no location reality.  We didn’t have the time or the access to do the airport scene in an airport.  But for our final class, we traveled to a small airport and filmed the four dramatic scenes we had been developing on a real jet, and went on from there to work with everyone’s greatest fear, an airplane losing control, and beginning its descent into oblivion.  It was electrifying and, to me, further proof that film acting classes should work, as much as possible, with life as it is being lived in the moment, and in the locations appropriate to it.  This is excellent training for the real thing: the day directors and players are out in the world shooting the feature film they are passionate about in locations which exactly suit their scenes.

The term “maverick” is rather generously, if not erroneously, applied by the media to anyone who shoots off their mouths at inappropriate times, or who makes a loud point of being unconventional, even if their actual history is rather conformist. Bay Area filmmaker Rob Nilsson puts his movies where his mouth is. He not only does what he says, he films it, so his rebellious nature is a matter of record, not just reputation. While he shuns the term “independent” he is in fact a uniquely gifted individual, equipped not only with a singularly articulate talent, but also with the clarity of purpose and boldness of vision to pursue his artistic agenda against all odds. Some of his more celebrated output includes Northern Lights (Winner, Camera D’or, Cannes, 1979); Heat and Sunlight (Winner, Grand Prize, Sundance, 1989); Signal 7 (1987); Chalk (1996); and Imbued (2009) starring Stacey Keach. This year alone he is finishing five separate films: What Happened Here?, a feature doc about Trotsky,  and four dramatic features: The Steppes, Collapse, Maelstrom, and Sisters. His latest initiative, Citizen Cinema: Studio of the Streets, is currently soliciting support from the film-conscious, and conscientious, community. His groundbreaking workshops, Tenderloin Action Group, Tenderloin yGroup and Citizen Cinema, have resulted in twenty impressively improvised, intimately interwoven films that are at the very cutting edge of 21st century world cinema. Beginning Thursday, February 24, Rob will be teaching a new course at Celik Kayalar’s Film Acting Bay Area, which operates out of Expressions College in Emeryville.  Later this summer he is being honored by the Moscow Film Festival with a retrospective of his eclectic body of work. On a personal side note, my father, actor Robert Viharo, appeared in several of Rob’s epic yet human-scaled 9@Night Series (2000-2007) in a recurring role as a wandering soul, and my wife Monica Cortes-Viharo was the female lead of Scheme C6 (2001). I even scored a cameo as myself, “Will the Thrill,” in the final 9@Night film, Go Together (2007), largely filmed at the now defunct Parkway Theater in Oakland. Recently the creatively busy, and busily creative, auteur answered a few quick, choice questions about his self-made success in a cutthroat industry.

What precisely do you find so personally and professionally influential about the work of John Cassavetes, and who or what else inspires you?

RN: When I first saw John’s films it was like looking through a window and seeing my own life.  And it was a way of looking which could reveal the secrets of anyone’s life.  As a kid I went to the matinees, at first to see Cowboys and Indians, and later to muster courage to kiss girls.  But I never took it seriously.  John showed that film could be about you and me.  It was shocking.  No other filmmaker had ever done it.  And I wanted to do it too.  I was also amazed by how Bergman put the lie to middle class pretensions.  He went behind the masks and showed the costs of ignoring our animal, visceral, lustful and vulnerable selves.  A great service to anyone who romanticizes the social, political and familial clichés we hide behind.

In a nutshell, how would you describe “Direct Action” as a thespian technique?

RN: Being able to push behind the façades.  Watching the unavoidable truth in people living their everyday, un-self conscious lives, is the single Great Entertainer.  But then when you go to the movies you see people making it up.  I don’t want players to make it up.  I want them to live it as if they were at home with nobody watching.  And I find that if people can learn to be emotional, they find it hard to lie.  So Direct Action is a series of things I learned which can keep players truthful, emotional, and living RIGHT NOW, as if they had no other choice.

Do you ever grow weary of all this world travel, and how does this globetrotting inform your rather intimate, small-scale, largely localized filmmaking style?

RN: I’ve made films around the world but I’m usually at home.  Right now I’m editing five feature films, four of which were shot in San Francisco.  What Happened Here?, my film about Trotsky was shot in Ukraine and Israel.  I think well when I go to Mexico which I do when I can afford it.  I’ve written many script-scenarios and poems in the Yucatan where I go to rewire.  But I disagree that my filmmaking is small scale.  I use the whole world around me, freely and without yellow tape, on tip toe, trying to avoid the restrictions that big money and film crews place on creative choice.

Do you find wider acceptance of your unique and exhaustively innovative brand of filmmaking abroad than domestically?

RN: I find I can exhaust people both here and abroad.  But recently I’ve been very happy with my reception in Armenia.  I’ve been there twice in the last two years and been given a Retrospective, been on their jury and have seen, in two weeks, more great films than I see in a year here in America.  And now the Moscow Film Festival is doing a Retrospective of my films.  A tremendous honor.  Unfortunately, pop culture and political correctness have done terrible harm to both filmmakers and audience in our country.  But there is still Mark Fishkin and the Mill Valley Festival which has supported my work for 30 years.  And, more recently, the Syracuse International Film Festival.

Do you see the internet as the future global venue for indie filmmakers, as opposed to the local bijou, and how healthy is an online community compared to the more immediate social environment of theatrical screenings?

RN: I see myself as a loner with the immense good fortune of having great friends and collaborators.  To me this is the advantage of living in a democracy.  You aren’t forced to think about words like “community.”  I’ve never actually seen a “community” in the wild, but I have seen great people who have banded together to do some remarkable things.  I also don’t like the term “indie”.  As I always say, I’m a “dependent” filmmaker, dependent on friends and fellow artists, on luck, and on a political environment built on opposing opinions clashing and compromising.  Beware the virtue of those who know what’s right.  So, to me, the internet is good if it gets us into bars where we can argue everything out.

Cheers!

Will “the Thrill” Viharo is a pulp fiction author and B Movie impresario.

And what is the mission?  I’ve written about it a lot, perhaps beyond the average soul’s patience, and I hate to repeat myself.  It seems that nothing which can be defined with the same words time after time, can be a living thing.  Living things are different every day.  They say that none of the actual cells which comprise our body today were there at our birth.  They constantly renew themselves even as they prepare for eventual extinction.  There’s a thought.  Renewal in the ultimate service of death.  Funny, since one could die at any moment, that death has a new meaning when you start approaching life’s limits.  Well, maybe not a meaning.  I don’t think there are any “meanings” in the stock way that word invites an answer.  There is the living moment and the tasks we set ourselves.  The goals we reach for.  What we value.  What we stand for.  And the questions.  Who do we love?  What beguiles and charms?  Who are our friends?  Our enemies?  What is the work we have undertaken in life?  What are our secrets?  What have we been afraid to say to that one person we have longed to know?

All ventures.  Gambits.  Desires.  Comrades.  Friends.  Lovers.  And questions.  Endless questions.  But no meanings.  How could there be in the midst of movement and change?  A meaning feels like a static thing.  Could Eliot’s “still point in a turning world” really exist?  Mustn’t it also turn?

So what is the mission then?  To continue.  To puzzle it out.  To wonder.  To be curious.  To pursue, “the way things seem to be.”  And not to turn away.  Not to fake it for any reason.  There are many compromises in life and we have all regretted some we’ve made.  But compromise in the “slipstream” which leads us to see and hear what is “out there” and which gives us the clearest sense of who we are?  We do that at the peril of destroying our most cherished gift.  So we carry on, straining to see and to hear and to make the cinema we learn by seeing and hearing.

And we want to do this with our friends and collaborators, not in an industry, but in an alliance of common interests and passions.  Studio of the Streets means having comrades and believers.  In my life I’ve been lucky to know many.  A short, current, but partial list: Mickey, Chikara, Al, Joel, Irit, David and Carol, Robindira and Robbie, Alan, Marshall, Tim, Adam, Celik, Michelle, Jacques, Deniz, Kevin, Brette, Drow, Charlie, Lauren and Carl, Stacy, Ron, Liz, Fred, Owen and Christine, Tom,  John and Marcia, Irit, Melody, Anne Marie, Michael, Lisa, Nancy, Bob, Michael and Karen, Stuart, Ed, Zoom, Ray, Mark, Zoe, Dan, KD, Harutyun and Tatevik, Nimrod and Victoria, Micha, Samantha, Steve, Bobby, David H. and F., Mira… I just let the names spew out.  So many to mention I could be at it for weeks.  So many who need to know that I think about them everyday and about all the work we’ve done together.

A great piece of news!  The Moscow Film Festival is going to have a retrospective of our films this year.  To have one film at the Moscow Film Festival would be honor enough, but to be given a retrospective, that’s just positively the best it can get.  I am hoping that many of us can meet over there and celebrate what we’ve accomplished.  This is going to happen in late June/early July, 2011.  I’ll keep you posted on details as I come to know them.

I also want you to know that on Thursday, Feb. 17 I am starting up again with a very interesting new class I’ve been giving at Celik Kayalar’s Film Acting Bay Area which operates out of Expressions College in Emeryville.  This will be the third time I’ve worked with developing directors and actors in an exploration of the Direct Action style of filmmaking.  This workshop takes up where I left off with the  Tenderloin Action Group, Tenderloin yGroup and Citizen Cinema workshops which have resulted in the creation of almost 20 feature films.

The class is based on my 40 years of filmmaking experience and from watching the work of the great directors who have inspired me.  And I am struck with how naturally people take to it.  And why not?  The method is based on the way we learn, act and react as we live day to day .  It is simple, dynamic, based on emotion, intuition, concentration, common sense, and all forms of human expressivity.  And… at its best it’s explosive and wrenching and, alternatively, tender and light as a feather.

I ask myself how I can leave something behind which carries on my interest (not to say fascination) with how people are, bottom line.  Why do some behaviors seem false and forced and others natural and “truthful”.  Why do we always know when someone is hiding out, faking it, letting outward appearance, deflective language and behavior hide what they’re really all about?  How can knowing when people are balanced, centered, honest and impassioned lead to a cinema movement which helps to show us who we are, and therefore has a utility beyond box office, entertainment and empty stardom?

I have always been interested in cinema “movements.”  Italian Neo-realism, the 60s French New Wave, Brazilian Cinema Novo, British Woodfall and American Cinema Verite which led to the narrative cinema of John Cassavetes.  In the 70s I was part of Cine Manifest, a cinema collective which led to the production of NORTHERN LIGHTS, Cannes Camera d’Or (1979) co-directed with John Hanson, where I first learned the secrets of working with actors and non- actors in a setting where we worked with the potent combo of what we hoped we knew and what we knew we didn’t.  Sometimes script.  Sometimes not.  No written dialogue wherever possible.  Freeing the body and mind to invent.  Writer/players in open and active engagement, on the set, in the heat of shooting, a company of adroit jazz players working with complex, but everyday music, requiring everyone to listen, to play, to wait, to listen, and to play again.

And now I am starting to find both players and directors who take to this method with great relish.  I have to say it’s thrilling and beautiful to watch and I’m glad to propose that this is the way to real cinema Art, linked to truthful human behavior, unique but everyday circumstances, productive of visions which are not only naturalistic, but which can morph into more visionary, surrealist areas normally thought to be arcane and esoteric.  This system begins with the most common of human activities and can be utilized in the creation of work which can explore all manners of the psychic, psychological, and experimental poetry which cinema continues to explore.

And so this is a project about finding a Movement,  the next generation of Artists who can carry on work which I took up from those who inspired me.  I’m not a fan of most current American art and cinema which seems, alternately, obviously crude and violent, and timid and fearful to offend.  Remember “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity..?”  Yeats said it better about his generation, than I can about mine.  But the sunburnt souls are still out there and I am hoping to inspire a Movement of new filmmakers who will take Direct Action out beyond to its ultimate potential.  I’ve already met some I’m hopeful will soon be lighting torches in dark places.

If you’d like to take this class go up on filmactingbayarea.com and look for my Direct Action Class.  If you’re too busy or too far away, but would like to stay abreast of things you can, for the price of admission, receive my weekly class notes and a chapter entitled WHAT I DO ABOUT IT from my (still) upcoming book WILD SURMISE, which lays out the procedures of Direct Action in some detail.  If you’d like to go that route, for convenience, just e-mail me at rnilsson@robnilsson.com.  I hope to be seeing some of you in class.  And for the rest of you, a limerick written by Robert Conquest which Christopher Hitchens included in his must-read memoir, HITCH 22.

There was an old bastard named Lenin,
Who did two or three million men in.
That’s a lot to have done in
But when he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in.

Now there’s a wordsmith to be reckoned with.

Opinion rules the world.   Except when looking into the Hubble telescope.  To me this is the source of holy writ in our times.  You see it at the end of NOISE from the 9 @ Night Film Series.  The Tenderloin pan handler with his basket dangling from a broom stick fishes for cash on the Embarcadero as the gas and dust of the Eagle nebula 6500 light years away stretches upward another 57 trillion miles.

I wonder what the spiritualists of the past would have thought if they could have viewed the ecstatic clouds of stars, holes, fields and rays, remnants of the bangs which comprise the jaw drop phantasmagoria of space stretching our vision of eternity out past the event horizon.  Today’s artists must use this, not only to make science fiction but to breathe poetry and inspire investigations into the vast energies which have created us.  We are the children of the stars.  Dust from the apocalypse.  Life from thermonuclear fission.  Death exits into oblivion.

But for now, back here on earth… be forewarned!  This is a four page plus letter.  I might advise a nice intoxicant of your choice, feet warming before a toasty fire, mood music on the Ipod, selective channeling of generous impulse and suspension of all redactive (not a valid Scrabble word) tendencies.

As you all know, for the last 15 years we have been making at least one feature film a year, produced with low budgets but mounted with the passion, commitment and collaboration of the players, artists, technicians and true believers who have collaborated with us.  We have also been lucky to find investors and patrons whose financial, legal and inspirational commitments have made the work possible.  Our thanks to them and their staunch support of this work.  David and Carol Richards, Marshall Spight, John and Marcia Stout, Michelle Anton Allen, Tom Perkins, Hemmerling Foundation, et als, where would we be without you?

The last couple of years have been particularly rewarding.  Out of the new Berkeley based Citizen Cinema Player’s Ensemble, we have cast and shot six new feature films.  We’ve finished one and have five more in the editing room.   SAND, featuring Irit Levi and William Martin had two sold out World Premiere shows at the Mill Valley Film Festival and won three Best Ensemble Acting Citations and one for Direction at the Syracuse International Film Festival.

And in 2010 we shot THE STEPPES, a new High Definition dramatic feature showcasing Irit Levi and an inspiring cast including workshop veterans Nancy Bower, David Hess, Marion Christian, Bruce Marovich, and Derrick O’Connor, a veteran of Monty Python, BRAZIL, a former Royal Shakespeare actor who has worked with the likes of Terry Gilliam, John Boorman and Mike Leigh.  Once again THE STEPPES features the world class cinematography of Mickey Freeman and the sound work of Chikara Motomura, and a San Francisco cast and crew.

In 2008 Syracuse hosted a retrospective of our films and in 2009 we had another retrospective at the Yerevan International Film Festival in Armenia where I also received their first Master Award.  You may know about the Nilsson Award, instituted by the Filmmaker’s Alliance of Los Angeles which I won in 2008 and now curate, giving the 2010 Award to Harutyun Khachatryan, a visionary Armenian filmmaker.

Other recent awards include the San Francisco Film Critics Circle Marlon Riggs Award, for the 9 @ Night Film Series and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the St. Louis International Film Festival, 2010.  2009 also saw the Mill Valley Film Festival World Premiere of IMBUED, starring Stacy Keach, a long time cinematic hero of mine since his unforgettable role in FAT CITY,  (1972) directed by John Huston.

NORTHERN LIGHTS directed by myself and John Hanson has just been restored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences where a print will be permanently stored in its vaults and used in special cinematic events throughout the world.  In addition SIGNAL 7, my second feature, is currently being restored by the Pacific Film Archives through the stewardship of Video Curator, Steve Seid.

A lot of work, some good recognition but a lot more work and recognition are needed to get us where we want to go.  At present here at Citizen Cinema we have five feature films in the edit room approaching completion.  They are:

1. THE STEPPES- led by producer/lead actor Irit Levi and line producer Joel Simone, with cinematography by Mickey Freeman and location sound by Chikara Motomura, we have collaborated with workshop talents Nancy Bower, (IMBUED, SISTERS), David Hess (LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT), Marion Christian (ATTITUDE, NEED) and Derrick O’Connor (MONTY PYTHON, BRAZIL).  A disillusioned Ukrainian woman growing old and stuck in her ways (Levi) languishes in a shut down Tenderloin hotel, challenged by a niece (Bower) determined to drag her back to life.
2. COLLAPSE- a drama produced by our workshop, the Citizen Cinema Player’s Ensemble, with cinematography by Deniz Demirer, editing by Stuart Sloan and featuring world class ex- ballet dancers Russell Murphy and Anita Paciotta along with current San Francisco Ballet principal dancers Lorena Feejoo and Damian Smith, Citizen workshop veterans William Martin, Michelle Anton Allen, Catherine Lerza, Diane Stark, Kari Wisingrad, et als.  A retired world class dancer returns to a dance company after 15 years with a challenging piece of choreography designed for a time of economic collapse.  The struggle between creative and financial hierarchies begins.
3. MAELSTROM- produced by Marshall Spight and Meets the Eye Productions, with cinematography by Adam Wilt and location sound by Tim Blackmore, MAELSTROM features a young French woman (Samantha Vandersteen) and her Portuguese boy friend ( Dan Silva) who arrive at a bed and breakfast on the slope of Mt. Tamalpais run by an eccentric playboy father (Ed Ferry) and his hermetic, but poetic, son (Deniz Demirer.) A bucolic spot to reveal an ugly secret, kept for over 30 years.
4. SISTERS- Catherine Lerza and Nancy Bower, veterans of the Citizen Cinema Ensemble Workshop are sisters, one, an adjunct professor in a local college who stayed home to take care of a mother with Alzheimers and the other who stretched her wings traveling the world as an ad executive.  One night of re-acquaintance, recrimination and remorse as their mother lies in the other room listening and plotting a course her daughters could hardly imagine.  Also featuring Michelle Anton Allen.
5. WHAT HAPPENED HERE?- a feature length documentary shot by Mickey Freeman and edited by Melody C. Miller, in search of the lost birthplace of Leon Trotsky, who, along with Lenin, was the most important figure in the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917.  A film which begins by exploring the life of a controversial, heroic figure, and ends as a tribute to those who suffer the consequences of ideology and the “excess of virtue” which motivates their leaders.  Shot in Ukraine, Israel and the US.

The way films are being financed and distributed is changing.  New models are being sought by everyone, even Hollywood producers who find the Digital Age has changed all the rules.  The same applies to us.  We have to find new tools, new supporters, and new markets in order to keep going.  In the best of times we operate lean and low to the ground.  And like everyone else we have been hit hard by the Recession. And so, at the moment we are putting new energy into developing the Internet connections which make Social Networking possible.  This is what we are doing today by reaching out to you.

We’re announcing today, 1/11/11 the inauguration of a new cinema initiative under the aegis of CITIZEN CINEMA, STUDIO OF THE STREETS, which allows you to become actively involved in the funding, producing and marketing of our films.  There are many ways for you to help us and we invite you to let us know if you have ideas on this score.   But our greatest need right now is to raise money to finish the five films listed above.  You can contribute to the cause on the following levels:

SUPPORTER: Level 1: Donation: 50- $100- supporters at this level will receive an autographed DVD from our library/store.  You will also appear as SUPPORTERS in the credits of the films you are supporting and be placed on a special e-mail list to be notified of World Premieres and other screenings of our pictures.  All funds will be utilized in finishing the five films listed above.

CONTRIBUTOR: Level 2: Donation: 100- $500- contributors at this level will receive two autographed DVDs of your choice from our library/store. You will also appear as CONTRIBUTORS  in the credits of the films you are contributing to and be placed on a special e-mail list of to be notified of World Premieres and other screenings of our pictures.  Contributions at the $500 level will receive tax deductible status.  All funds will be utilized in finishing the five films listed above.

BACKER: Level 3: $500- $1000- backers at this level will receive 3 autographed DVDs of your choice from our library/store, appear in a list of BACKER credits on the films  films you are backing, be informed of all activities, screenings and events our films participate in and receive Free Tickets to all World Premiere screenings of our films, their parties and related functions.  You will also receive a movie poster of one of our films.  All Backer contributions will be tax deductible.  Funds raised will be used in the completion of the five films listed above.

SPONSOR: $1000- $5000-  sponsors at this level will receive 4 autographed DVDs of your choice from our library/store, appear in a list of SPONSOR credits on the film you are sponsoring, be informed of all activities, screenings and events our films participate in and receive Free Tickets to all World Premiere screenings of our films, their parties and special functions.  You will also receive 2 autographed movie posters from any of our films you select.  All Sponsor contributions will be tax deductible.

Anyone wanting more information on these and other potential levels of financial involvement should contact me at rnilsson@robnilsson.com.

The films we are making come from the grass roots and from the streets and they reach out towards catharsis and high achievement in the arts.  They are not made on the standard brands Hollywood industrial model but are crafted on an Artisanal basis, with players and artists who together seek “the way things seem to be.” These films do not encourage you to lean back and be “done”.  We want to make you work a little, lean forward, sweat a bit to help us build an American cinematic art which carries us past our present Post Modern malaise into the “après garde” of a new era of human questioning.

We need your help. Newspapers, magazines and other print media are drying up.  This means word of mouth is even more important than in the past.  Buy DVDs from our store.  Share e-mail addresses of new people who might be interested. Set up screenings of our films at your home or in your neighborhood.  Invite us to attend.  Encourage people to join the 15,000.  Tell them to go up on robnilsson.com, go to the right side of the page and click on “Join”. Let the world know that we are the American alternative to both Indiewood and Hollywood.

As advertised, this has been a long letter but we want to encourage a return to long letters.  The Internet has fostered the idea of brevity.  Get to the point, Stupid, and shut up.  We would rather return to the bars and taverns and fireplaces and mountain tops where long, digressive conversations, arguments, rants and passionate pronunciamientos have always provided un- canned inspiration .  Let’s climb out of the can, brothers and sisters of the 15,000….  BE SEEN AND BE HEARD!

And a special prize for definitions of the word redactive,

Rob

And what is more… in the category of new business we have two future projects on the docket.  WOMAN 1, a dramatic feature film about a year in the life of Willem de Kooning featuring Thure Lindhardt, an up and coming Danish discovery as de Kooning and featuring a powerful supporting cast including Stacy Keach, Ron Perlman, Tom Bower and Maria Grazia Cucinotta (IL POSTINO).   WOMAN 1 will be produced by Marshall Spight, his Meets the Eye Production Company and the  Glimpser LLC with Spight, Nilsson, John Stout and Michelle Anton Allen as principals.

Now in development with Celik Kayalar’s Film Acting Bay Area is LOST ART, a five part dramatic feature about the world of art in the post modern era.  Artists, art thieves, musem curators, security guards, bartenders, barbers, and barristers engage in the fall out from a mysterious dream concerning Robert Delaunay, a 20th Century abstract painter for whom the poet Guillaume Apollinaire invented the term “Orphic”.   Designed as an “act of education” we hope to collaborate with Bay Area art and educational organizations in an “all Bay Area” production.

I’ve never thought you were much if you had to go around saying so. Mom said if you were any good others would do the job. This is why I hate advertising. Because you don’t have to be any good to advertise. Self belief could be self deceit. The world is filled with psychopaths who are popular. And for every psychopath there’s someone who feels the need to shore up their own feelings of insignificance by bowing before their idol’s trappings of grandeur. I guess we all know that Hitler was an elected official. Leni Riefenstahl glorified him and others followed suit. Did anyone notice that both he and Mussolini called themselves Socialists? And, for awhile, a lot of people bought into it.

On the other hand, there are also people who want to live in an ivory tower of their own imagined greatness. A lot of pride in that, false pride, but maybe it works for them. It creates a tremendous silence which they can fill with the imaginary roar of the crowds. Some of these people are probably worthy of notice, but they’d be damned if they had to work to get it. Beneath them. Their mantra: Someday the world will be sorry that I was neglected.

A few thoughts on the dilemma of the independent, the solitary, the malcontent, the outsider, the iconoclast. In most rooms I enter, I know there is unlikely to be anyone who agrees with me. On most topics. So I know I’m in for a tussle if I want to be honest. So why walk into rooms to begin with? I suspect at root, out of desire. I want to love. I want to be noticed by those I admire, agreement or not. And I want to communicate. And stand for something.

Or, if I’m not so honest, I’m there because I think I should be. I’m home for Xmas with the family, not because I want to be, but because it’s expected of me. Oh, Oh. How does that work for your “loved” ones? How phony to be with someone because you’re afraid not to be!

In the last few years I’ve noticed how small the circle of true friends really is. And it seems to be getting smaller. Perhaps then, a monastic existence is the most suitable for some. When I was in my 20s I took the walking pilgrimage out to Greece’s Mt. Athos, a place where many monasteries still exist, dating back to the 7th century and before. The monks take you in for a night’s rest if you knock on the doors of their ancient eyries carved out of the sides of steep cliffs overlooking the sea. I have almost no memory of this stern and forbidding place and its silent occupants except for the feeling of depression I left with.

But there’s also a lot to be wary of in our consumer culture, cluttered with the noise of incessant chat, yak, gush and gab on net, on cell, lap, pad and desk.  Wed to the things of this earth, including allegiance to an Art which combines eye with heart, and head with all the human emotions, how can I relate to a world which has turned to a caste of millionaire rock, sport, pop, capitol hill, movie, game show, newscast, celebrity weather, fishing boat, ax men, ice road, talent show, great chase, video game, cooking show, junk news, up, up and away, amazing grace and kumbaya all purpose and 100% certified STARS to moderate, adjudicate and mediate all things human?

We all know you can’t take Stars home for dinner. For that we have friends, not Stars and not many of those, which is how it should be. You want people you can square with, dispense with protocol and petty etiquette and say what you really think. So recently I’ve been feeling a renewed need for combat and conversation. I want to break out, talk more, argue more, fight it out with people of all stripes. I want to get back to increasing my circle of collaborators and antagonizing my detractors if I can. I did more of that back when I had my column for Res Magazine, and even though I’ve recently determined to concentrate on praising people and groups I admire, I have the Nilsson Award to give out now (thanks to the Filmmaker’s Alliance) for that.

Today I want more people to know about us at Citizen Cinema, about what we think about and want to do in a world where Big Time Media and Small Time Education have created a climate where fear of offending anybody has hamstrung our cinema and made it either an adjunct of corporate business or a branch of Ann Landers dress- up with the words “post modern” pinned inside our mittens. Nonetheless, you have to go there to know what there is. I want to know why our so called “independent” cinema seems so awfully puny and designed for over-aged teens. And why too, with all the interconnectivity around, so few of the present day IFP or Landmark films can play for more than a day at a time in theaters.  Something doesn’t fit here.

It seems to me that our new generations have resisted the high flown idealism and romanticism found in the late 50s and 60s generations.  Those were days of experimentation, attempts to break out in politics, break in with sexual experimentation and pyschedelia, and break up status quo social structures and 50s economic security. Sex, politics, art… everything was ripe for exploration. It was the era of Existentialism. Personal responsibility. Individual transcendence. Communal responsibility.

At it’s best the 50s and 60s produced painters like Willem de Kooning, musicians like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and film directors such as John Cassavetes. We had over the top political movements from the Black Panthers to the Weather Underground which reminded us of the dangers of ideology and unchallenged virtue. More pragmatically we admired the Kennedys with their high ideals and risk-taking lives. We fought for civil rights, women’s rights, all kinds of rights. We were conscientious objectors, draft card burners, Peace Corps teachers or drop outs who read ON THE ROAD and went out on the trains or hitchhiked the highways alone, or in communally, to find out what was there and who we were. Money wasn’t as available then. People were looking for vision, energy, adventure, and political commitment. The thing which suffered the most was the family. Divorce rates kept pace with commitments to personal growth. And who suffered? The children, the generation which today seems so oblivious to the transcendent possibilities of both life and art. Maybe they are trying to make up for the profligacy of their parents by pursuing a constrained definition of good: environment, race, class, gender equality, fascination with diversity. Maybe these are good causes but in the absence of passionate living and personal exploration they take on a schoolmarm-ish tinge. Trying to be virtuous doesn’t equate to virtue. We need people whose humanity comes from having lived fully. Humility and fellow feeling come more from failure than from piety.

Individual freedom is still the foundation and destination of democratic struggle, the relief valve of our American system of checks and balances, the serious antidote to worship of absolute virtue practiced by all totalitarian groups, from the Catholic Church to the Bolshevik Party. And it isn’t as if we don’t have any recent examples of dangerous and misbegotten virtue. The ideologically pure Russian, Chinese and Cambodian Revolutions ended up in slaughter, genocide and finally, sadism, cynicism and death of the spirit. Pure Socialism is as disastrous as pure Fascism. We need our enemies, our adversaries, our opponents to help us understand who we are.

Our American cinema seems oblivious to all of this. The Star system assures that we remain in thrall to charismatics and plot driven fantasies. The so called Independent cinema lives in a bubble of moralistic certainties where fear of offending anyone takes the place of honesty and vision. The problem is that we used to count on our artists to help us see “the way things seem to be” and to inspire catharsis, inspiration and transformation. Petty morality is what we get today from under- educated people who think that entertainment is their highest calling.

And so I’ve begun a study of how we and you (we at Citizen Cinema and you out there in the world of the 15,000) could join together to be more effective in getting real cinema back into the world. I don’t do this because I think communication over the Internet can take the place of a beer after work with friends or that blogging, clouding, spamming and yammering is the answer to anything. In the Bible of Social Networking there’s the usual “we’re all in this together” snuggled up against “fight it out in the capitalist markets and good luck to you” competitive tough talk.

But I have a different idea. I want to find out if it’s possible to build a community of collaborators who don’t agree with the easy assumptions of everyday liberal (or conservative) behavior. Would it be possible to find a small, self-confident, non- conforming, circle of tough minded allies who don’t want to chant in a circle and wallow in nostalgia any more than they’d want to spend purgatory watching Hollywood films? How about a group of people who are skeptical of both Post Modern art- speak and Lifetime Channel sweet talk and who are interested, as I am, in “the way things seem to be”? Could they be found, maybe only a few per town, but on highways and byways around the world and could they, working together, help create cinema closer to the ground, more honest, less simple minded, more in tune with the wild surmise than the two bit down- size we find in a society where the avant garde has become the establishment? Maybe so. Maybe we’ve already done it. We’re the 15,000. Maybe we just need to carry it further. The old tried and true Avant Garde finally won its battle. Like Christianity in the 5th Century, it became the establishment. Which means tame and old and out of touch. But we’re the Après Garde, on our way with new vision which will seek out the energies and forces which truly touch and stir. The coming shift is cathartic and its aim is to revitalize the way we live, work and experience the world. And those of you reading this can be a part of it. In fact, you already are. You’re in the 15,000.

Although I’ve been a bit out of touch with many of you these last couple of years, I’ve been hard at work with many close collaborators making a lot of films. So I hope many of you are still with me because you can expect a thumbnail report of our progress after the first of the year. A lot going on to tell you about. And expect a proposal intended for those of you who are hard core and in general agreement with me about the cinema of today.

Meantime, out in the real world, my daughter Robindira and my son in law Robbie created the beautiful India Petra who was born in late September.  So now I have a granddaughter, a serene and beautiful child, just like her mother as a baby, serene and beautiful as she remains today, to say nothing of smart, talented and blessed with a work ethic, a tough attention to detail, and an artist’s heart. Family has an added importance to me this year and what better than to have Christmas coming right up to help express it. I wish all of you a good one. A lot of blessings to count living in this country. Many things to criticize but think about the alternative. I’ll take my chances here. Anyday.

Rob Nilsson