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Big Year for Nilsson’s Citizen Cinema by Doniphan Blair
Rob Nilsson at Citizen Cinema studios, a non-prepossessing modern two story in North Berkeley, but replete with a small theater, an editing suite, a music studio and two living spaces. photo: Citizen Cinema
Rob Nilsson, the peripatetic, prodigious and poetic director, as well as writer, film activist and philosopher, is also the CEO of a mini-studio called Citizen Cinema. Composed of talented students, dedicated volunteers and old master associates and headquartered in North Berkeley, it is defying the recession, film trends, and his age (70) with one ridiculously productive year.
Of the five films in studio, "What Happened Here?," which about to be released, is a new turn for Nilsson. About the Russian leader Leon Trotsky, and partly shot by Nilsson himself in the Ukraine, Israel and the US, it follows his search for where Trotsky was born physically, and what happened to him, metaphysically.
"Yes, but the emphasis switches from Trotsky to the farmers and peasants he grew up with and swore to protect, and their suffering under the large ideas he imposed," Nilsson told me by phone, when I finally tracked him down on a recent Monday. "I end up empathizing with the people who had to endure the tragedies of the Ukraine. In some ways, Trotsky became what he was fighting against—excess of virtue becomes worse than excess of vice."
"I am pretty much doing it on my own with help from producers David and Carol Richards. I have Melody C. Miller, a young editor and film prodigy as my chief collaborator. As always, I make it up with collaborators and like-minded true-believers. I shot the first trip myself but Mickey [Freeman, Nilsson's regular cameraman] came on the second. In Israel [where he went to interview the last survivor of the vanished Ukranian town were Trotsky was born] two young Israelis shot and translated for me. It's kind of a 'by any means possible' sort of thing."
Nilsson has made docs before, notably the 1990 "Words for the Dying" about a John Cale and Brian Eno musical collaboration, also shot in Russia oddly enough, but "What Happened Here?" is surprisingly political for the emphatically personal Nilsson. It is an attempt to uncover the meaning behind a movement which galvanized the world for three-quarters of a century and perplexed Nilsson when he was part of a Bay Area film collective, CineManifest, in the 1970s, questions which also tugged at his first feature, "Northern Lights."
"Here is a guy who won the award for best feature at Sundance ['Heat and Sunlight'], and the Camera d’Or for best first feature at Cannes, who is just starting to get retrospectives in prominent festivals around the world," noted Mark Fiskin of the Mill Valley Film Festival. "I think he had one in Armenia, of all places. It is amazing that Berlin or Cannes haven't done a retrospective."
In Armenia, at the Yerevan International [also called the Golden Apricot] Film Festival, Nilsson received the first Master Award. He had a retrospective there last year and sat on the jury this year, working with festival director Harutyun Khachatryan, the respected Armenian director of "Border," (2009).
"'Border' seemed like an entirely new kind of film to me... bridging fantasy and documentary in a way I’ve never seen before. This is not an avant-garde film. I would call it après-garde. 'Border' does not experiment. It creates an experience which the modern world needs to have," Nilsson said, on the occasion of awarding Khachatryan the 2010 Nilsson Award at the Filmmakers Alliance's VisionFest in Los Angeles recently. The award was established to honor Nilsson in 2008 and he now heads the selection committee. Although this smacks of nepotism, a problem that plagues arts organizations, it actually buttresses and builds the international cinema culture, where a coterie of dedicated film masters keep the titans of commerce in balance, if not at bay.
"I loved Armenia," Nilsson added, in our conversation. "This is a place where art is still alive. To me, there is an interconnectivity between people, art and the land. Some of it comes out of a national tragedy which we haven’t had in our country [at least since the Civil War]."
"I was [also] invited to the St. Louis International Film festival [Cinema St. Louis] this year and got a Lifetime Achievement Award. In Syracuse, 'Sand' got the 'Jury Citation for Ensemble Acting' for Irit Levi, William Martin and Ken Huie. It’s nice to be recognized. And I am wracking up the lifetime achievement awards. But the job is to get these movies done, a job which becomes harder and harder in this economy."
If anyone can do that job, however, it is Nilsson. By organizing crack teams of citizen cineastes—actors, student techs and long-term stalwarts, on camera, cast and crew—Rob can whittle a feature budget down to an astounding $15, 000.
"Surprisingly enough to me, 'Sand' [which did, in fact, cost around $15,000] has become a favorite for many," Nilsson told me. A comedic film noir, "Sand" was edited by Drow Millar and follows two searching if confused souls as they come together and split apart on their way to the New Mexican desert. "Sand" debuted at this year's Mill Valley Film Festival. "It has a comic light hearted touch that came out of a workshop. I found my narrative voice. A little like 'Jules and Jim,' it has a quasi-ironical voice that gives it room to breathe," Nilsson said.
But Nilsson is also happy to work with higher budgets. "The Steppes," which "I have a lot of good feelings about," and is the third film on deck is currently weighing in around $100,000. The co-producer is Irit Levi and actors include Monty Python veteran Derrick O’Connor as well as David Hess and Marion Christian and, as the lead, Nancy Bower, the daughter from "Imbued," which starred Stacy Keach and debuted at Mill Valley 2009. Shot this year, and now in post, for "Steppes" Nilsson returns to the San Francisco Tenderloin, where he organized his first major acting troupe and workshop, to follow an aging Ukrainian woman in a skid row hotel down on her luck.
A scene from 'Collapse,' which was created in workshop with a group of dancers from the San Francisco Ballet. photo: Citizen Cinema
"'Collapse' [Citizen Cinema's fourth in-progress feature] is also important," Nilsson admitted, late in our conversation. "I got fascinated with dancing late in life, due to Rusty Murphy. A principal dancer with SF Ballet, he played the rival in 'Heat and Sunlight', (1989), in which Nilsson stars as the leading man. I hadn't seen him in 20 years. But he and his wife, Anita Paciotti, also a principal dancer at the San Francisco Ballet, came to a Citizen Cinema workshop and we jumped right back into it. Now they are taking me to new ballets and we are doing this film." The story concerns a dancer turned cinematographer who must fight with the ballet board about mounting an ambitious dance piece during the recession. Current SF Ballet principals Lorena Feejoo and Damian Smith are also featured.
As if that was not enough, there is "Maelstrom," a collaboration between Marshall Spight’s Meets the Eye Production Company and Citizen Cinema, about a French woman and her Portuguese boyfriend at a bed & breakfast next to Mount Tamalpais where long lost secrets emerge. Or "Sisters," a narrative feature about a day in the life of two sisters, one stay-at-home, the other a world traveler, and featuring Nancy Bower and Cathy Lerza, who is also in "Collapse." Both of these pieces emerged from one of Nilsson's famous improv workshops.
Another shot from 'Collapse,' shot in the ruins of the Sutro Bath on Ocean Beach, San Francisco. photo: Citizen Cinema
Still in development is the long-rumored Willem de Kooning project, to be produced by Marshall Spight along with Michelle Allen, John Stout and Tom Bower. The Danish actor, Thure Lindhardt, is attached as the lead, and Stacy Keach, Ron Perlman and Maria Grazia Cucinotta [of "El Postino"] will appear in major roles, making it Nilsson's most star-studded film to date. "I am very excited about the possibilities," says Nilsson. Then there is "Lost Art," which is emerging from a workshop with Celik Kayalar the director of "Moonlight Sonata," (2009) and Film Acting Bay Area.
"It is something I’ve written," Nilsson explained. "It will feature five interlocking stories, a la 'Babel,' [by Alejandro Inarritu] about the world of artists, curators, museums and art theft, a Bay Area collaboration with artists, art schools and other institutions. Pictures like these go slower than we like because of the money and logistics involved. It is nice to have the pictures that you just do because you can. If you had to wait for the larger industry-style budgets every time, all you’d do is wait."
"The enterprise I am emphasizing this year is called 'Citizen Cinema, Studio of the Streets.' I am going to try to raise production and post production money with subscriptions over the Internet. I have the 'Social Media Bible' here by my bed. A lot of it is foreign to me, and some of it sounds a little desperate. I am trying to expand 'The 15,000' [a mailing list and 'quorum' of supporters Nilsson has developed] to a lean and mean cadre, or Studio of Streets."
"I think there are two things our democracy has championed: one is dialogue. You must have enemies, competitors, opponents or you end up like the Bolsheviks. The other is individual freedom, to speak, to travel, to make art. For all our faults, we are still the best place on earth for that. Notwithstanding, my dream and present fantasy would be to live in Progresso, the port town for Merida. The ruins of the old Mayan cultures [nearby] are half the reason, but it’s also cheap. I looked at a six bedroom house with three balconies right on the beach for 150,000 grand. It would have been nice if I had the dough."
To top it off, Nilsson has just become a grandfather—with the recent arrival of India Petra, the daughter of his daughter Robindira—and he plans to spend a lot of time with her. "Thinking about India, starting off as a child at this time, with the world as it is, is really quite mind expanding. It has been a long time since I have been that close to a little child. So serene, a beauty inside and out, just like her mother.” Posted on Dec 17, 2010 - 10:16 AM