After a week of wrapping up the loose ends generated by finishing three films, creating promotional materials, beating drums and blowing horns, getting people in their seats, the right picture on the screen, good sound coming out of the speakers, the courage to face the music after the show, now, with the confetti blown away and the sawdust swept up it is time to thank all of you who helped make our films at the Mill Valley Film Festival a great success.

By means fair and foul we filled the seats for all four of our World Premiere screenings, two for PRESQUE ISLE, produced with the San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking, and one each for USED and GO TOGETHER, the last two films in the 9 @ Night series produced with the Tenderloin yGroup. After PRESQUE ISLE’s Premiere we had a great party catered by the school for which we thank Corinne Cox, Shelby Stricklin, Tammy Miller, Lea Kopels, Marcella Dirks, Matt Lohona and Dan MacGregor, Grand Masters of food and drink. Then after our last screening we got a standing ovation for GO TOGETHER, the last of the 9 @ Night films, a wonderful send-off to all of us who are now in the business of bringing these films to the world. We drank beer (before, or was it after) and talked and argued film vociferously into the following morning. Many heroes and collaborators over those years, too numerous to mention. So, for now, those most directly engaged in this last push to the finish:

Thanks to Al Nelson who designed sound and mixed three feature films in less than a month. Thanks to Nadine Laule who spent two years editing GO TOGETHER and to Chikara Motomura who took over when Nadine had to leave the country, finished GO TOGETHER, did color correction on PRESQUE ISLE, artwork and DVD conversion for USED and GO TOGETHER and just generally functioned as the lynch pin for Citizen Cinema.

Thanks to Mickey Freeman, Director of Photography on PRESQUE ISLE and (with Chikara) GO TOGETHER, for color correction and exacting standards at tech screenings and to Dan MacGregor equipment and stage manager at SFSDF who was there when we needed him. Thanks to Rob Lee and his two years of work editing USED, for his artwork on the CD of Gawain Mathew’s memorable score, for his steel trap mind and non-stop creative energy. Thanks to Milena Grozeva Levy, her excellent editing, her amazing special FX creations and her indefatigable work ethic to finish PRESQUE ISLE in time.

Thanks to Charlie Wilson of Sonic Zen Studios who found Gawain Mathews for us and helped record the score, and to Gawain for his brilliance in composition and performance, and to Kit Walker for his inspired music for PRESQUE ISLE, and Al Nelson’s for GO TOGETHER. Thanks to our long time core supporters including John and Marcia Stout, David and Carol Richards, Marshall Spight, Denny Dey, Tom Perkins, Gerry Hemmerling, and all the others without whom there would not even be 1 @ Night, let alone 9.

Thanks to Randy Gonzales, Martin Wickstrom and J.C. Todd for designing posters, postcards and flyers. Thanks to Orion Star for his tireless work on our new web site, citizencinema.net (also robnilsson.com) Thanks to Celik Kayalar for casting and moral support (and some of the liquid variety). Thanks to Mark Fishkin, Zoe Elton, K.D. Davis, Dan Zastrow, Joni Cooper and all of the Mill Valley staff who went out of their way to accommodate us during the festival, and to Pam Hamilton and Karen Larsen and staff who worked to get our cause on the air and into print.

And finally thanks to Jeremiah Birnbaum and Stephen Kopels who created the San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking and who had the courage to make a challenging film like PRESQUE ISLE their first production.

There are more people to mention but most people get up after the movie is over and only a few stay to watch the credits, so I’m stopping here. But with this one thought. There are souls, precious to me, who see what we’re trying to accomplish, who believe in cinematic art as, first and foremost, an adventure into “the way things seem to be.” It goes back to Keats for me and ODE ON A GRECIAN URN:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty- that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

How sad and naïve it sounds in the midst of our cynical Pop Age with its pompous “knowers” spewing political certainties on every TV show, Plastic Fantastics of every stripe trying to convince us of the truth of cosmetic bromides everyone knows are trivial, but few bother to condemn. Bunk at best, and at worst, the corruption of the natural, primal capacity of people to relax into their true natures.

Well, so be it. Perhaps we all have our personal version of what’s wrong with the world. But give me those who act on that knowledge. Give me those who speak and act as if things rare and precious, things which require much labor, but if found, liberate and inspire, are the world’s true business. Let me be in the company of pilgrims who see their own shortcomings and weaknesses first, but secondly, seek to point out the truths and beauties the poets have told us about.