Feb 10, 2026
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Cinephile Confessions in the Time of Covid
by Alli Antero
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Helen (Helia Rasti) and Phineas (Douglas Allen) in Alli's 'The Alchemy of Sulphur',. image: courtesy A. Alli BACK IN 2003, AFTER MAKING UNDER-
ground feature films for eight years, I sent a series of DVDs to various agents in Los Angeles. I was hungry for any feedback they might offer and for the off chance they might buy or find distribution for my movies.
Of the nine or so I contacted, only one replied; he actually called me on the phone! The agent said, “We love your work but your films are marketing nightmares. We wouldn’t know how or where to place them.” And then, the punchline, “Would you consider working within an existing genre?”
I thanked him for his feedback but no thanks, my creative processes wouldn’t work within any prefab format. In parting ways, he said, “Good luck. I mean that. Don’t take this the wrong way but your films are too original for the market.”
Too original for the market? That became my mantra for the next few days as I tried processing what it actually meant. WTF?! This was my wake-up call. It meant... Fuck LA, fuck genres, fuck agents and fuck their market politics. Whatever latent fantasy I harbored about “being discovered” or “hitting it big” or seeing my films achieve national release — all evaporated into the void.
In Alli's 'Vanishing Field', the Oracle (Nita Bryant) confronts Jacob on the astral plane. image: courtesy A. Alli I was now free to create on my own terms without any subconscious drive to impress or please anyone but myself. Over the next twelve years and seven features later, I was on a burning mission from God, or the Muses (sometimes, they’re the same thing), making films under oath of zero compromise and total artistic control.
I toured my movies up and down the west coast between San Francisco and Seattle paying my way by selling DVDs and splitting the admissions with the hosting venues.
After fifteen years of almost nonstop film and music production, my wife Sylvi and I were burnt out and in late 2015, we relocated from Berkeley, California, to Portland, Oregon. Portland is a city surrounded by forests; one of them, Forest Park is larger than Central Park, NY. Our daily forest walks gradually rejuvenated us to the point of finally considering a new creative project (Sylvi and I have been artistic collaborators since first meeting in 1989; it’s who we are and what we do).
Over the next four years, we reinvented ourselves through the creation of five experimental theatre productions, each one featuring text by my favorite poets: Rimbaud, Bukowski, Hilda Doolittle (HD), Blake, and Plath. What made these productions experimental was their visceral and physically ritualistic style of achieving extreme states for performers and audience alike. This approach was initially inspired by my early exposure to the paratheatrical work of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski in 1977 and has been documented at paratheatrical.com.
Filmmaker, theater director and other arts worker Antero Alli. image: courtesy A. Alli This experimental theatre process came to an end when I could no longer find performers to meet the demands and standards I had set for myself. It also coincided with the end of a forty-year era of directing groups in these experimental theatre and ritual processes.
I was in my late sixties and had outgrown this part of myself. I needed to let go of something I had been clinging to. I decided to post all my films online as free views on YouTube and Vimeo, a giveaway compelled by a final renunciation of commercial gain for or with art. My gift to the world.
In the Fall of 2019, the Muses finally called with a vision about an astral-travelling subversive Zen monk. This triggered memories of a traumatic out of body experience I suffered in my early twenties, a shock that annihilated any previous identification with my physical body.
In my final experimental theatre production, “Escape from Chapel Perilous” (Dec. 2018), I invited a local Zen monk to play the disembodied spirit of a monk wandering the bardo between incarnations. A year later, in the Fall of 2019, I cast him as the astral-travelling Zen monk in my next film, “The Vanishing Field”.
He agreed and invited me to shoot the movie in the Zen monastery where he lived and worked along with other monks who agreed to appear in this chiefly improvised film. “The Vanishing Field” was completed over four months and received favorable reviews before its Portland premiere was covid-cancelled; it went straight to YouTube with my other films.
After “The Vanishing Field” was released, I wrote a book distilling the paratheatrical methods I had developed over the past four decades. The book was published as State of Emergence by Original Falcon Press in late 2020. I started wondering if the Muses of Cinema would ever call again. My life as a theatre director was over and I was feeling the earth and sky open up before me.
From Alli's 'The Alchemy of Sulphur', Calliope (Cynthia Schwell) appears in a dream. image: courtesy A. Alli Sylvi and I continued our almost daily forest walks, along with our wonderful river walks. Besides its densely forested regions, Portland is bordered and contained by the great Columbia and Willamette rivers with nearby Mount Hood and Baker watching over us.
A year later, the Cinema Muses sent me my next vision about a writer who writes herself into a story with unexpected real world consequences.
This psychological romance of a woman falling in love with a figment of her imagination in a story she was writing ignited new fires in my ongoing obsession with mystical themes. Exploring a story of how the power of imagination shapes our experiences and our beliefs became my compass for navigating the Covid Bardo.
The term “Bardo” comes from the Tibetan Buddhist idea of an interim dimension between incarnations — when we die, our soul enters this limbo state, this bardo, where it drifts until incarnating, again, into the human condition.
“The Alchemy of Sulphur” was made over six months in 2021 during the challenging quarantine era of social distancing and masks. Four of the five actors were vaccinated and since most of the scenes were filmed outdoors at a nearby wildlife refuge, we were happy to play in a mask-free environment.
Moment from 'Soror Mystica: Ritual Invocation of the Anima'' a ParaTheatrical ReSearch performance, 2017: courtesy A. Alli Unless we’re shut down by covid or State regulations, as of this writing the world premiere of “The Alchemy of Sulphur” is scheduled for Sunday night November 7th at the Clinton Street Theater in Portland. This new film will be also posted on YouTube on November 11th.
For more details on any of the above, see my site Vertical Pool, or my book, "State of Emergence".
As a love slave to the Muses, Antero has helped them create fourteen feature art films and numerous documentaries and shorts since 1992 and be reached here
Posted on Jan 10, 2022 - 09:56 PM
by Alli Antero
Please support our stories by liking articles—thanks!
Helen (Helia Rasti) and Phineas (Douglas Allen) in Alli's 'The Alchemy of Sulphur',. image: courtesy A. Alli ground feature films for eight years, I sent a series of DVDs to various agents in Los Angeles. I was hungry for any feedback they might offer and for the off chance they might buy or find distribution for my movies.
Of the nine or so I contacted, only one replied; he actually called me on the phone! The agent said, “We love your work but your films are marketing nightmares. We wouldn’t know how or where to place them.” And then, the punchline, “Would you consider working within an existing genre?”
I thanked him for his feedback but no thanks, my creative processes wouldn’t work within any prefab format. In parting ways, he said, “Good luck. I mean that. Don’t take this the wrong way but your films are too original for the market.”
Too original for the market? That became my mantra for the next few days as I tried processing what it actually meant. WTF?! This was my wake-up call. It meant... Fuck LA, fuck genres, fuck agents and fuck their market politics. Whatever latent fantasy I harbored about “being discovered” or “hitting it big” or seeing my films achieve national release — all evaporated into the void.
In Alli's 'Vanishing Field', the Oracle (Nita Bryant) confronts Jacob on the astral plane. image: courtesy A. Alli I toured my movies up and down the west coast between San Francisco and Seattle paying my way by selling DVDs and splitting the admissions with the hosting venues.
After fifteen years of almost nonstop film and music production, my wife Sylvi and I were burnt out and in late 2015, we relocated from Berkeley, California, to Portland, Oregon. Portland is a city surrounded by forests; one of them, Forest Park is larger than Central Park, NY. Our daily forest walks gradually rejuvenated us to the point of finally considering a new creative project (Sylvi and I have been artistic collaborators since first meeting in 1989; it’s who we are and what we do).
Over the next four years, we reinvented ourselves through the creation of five experimental theatre productions, each one featuring text by my favorite poets: Rimbaud, Bukowski, Hilda Doolittle (HD), Blake, and Plath. What made these productions experimental was their visceral and physically ritualistic style of achieving extreme states for performers and audience alike. This approach was initially inspired by my early exposure to the paratheatrical work of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski in 1977 and has been documented at paratheatrical.com.
Filmmaker, theater director and other arts worker Antero Alli. image: courtesy A. Alli I was in my late sixties and had outgrown this part of myself. I needed to let go of something I had been clinging to. I decided to post all my films online as free views on YouTube and Vimeo, a giveaway compelled by a final renunciation of commercial gain for or with art. My gift to the world.
In the Fall of 2019, the Muses finally called with a vision about an astral-travelling subversive Zen monk. This triggered memories of a traumatic out of body experience I suffered in my early twenties, a shock that annihilated any previous identification with my physical body.
In my final experimental theatre production, “Escape from Chapel Perilous” (Dec. 2018), I invited a local Zen monk to play the disembodied spirit of a monk wandering the bardo between incarnations. A year later, in the Fall of 2019, I cast him as the astral-travelling Zen monk in my next film, “The Vanishing Field”.
He agreed and invited me to shoot the movie in the Zen monastery where he lived and worked along with other monks who agreed to appear in this chiefly improvised film. “The Vanishing Field” was completed over four months and received favorable reviews before its Portland premiere was covid-cancelled; it went straight to YouTube with my other films.
After “The Vanishing Field” was released, I wrote a book distilling the paratheatrical methods I had developed over the past four decades. The book was published as State of Emergence by Original Falcon Press in late 2020. I started wondering if the Muses of Cinema would ever call again. My life as a theatre director was over and I was feeling the earth and sky open up before me.
From Alli's 'The Alchemy of Sulphur', Calliope (Cynthia Schwell) appears in a dream. image: courtesy A. Alli A year later, the Cinema Muses sent me my next vision about a writer who writes herself into a story with unexpected real world consequences.
This psychological romance of a woman falling in love with a figment of her imagination in a story she was writing ignited new fires in my ongoing obsession with mystical themes. Exploring a story of how the power of imagination shapes our experiences and our beliefs became my compass for navigating the Covid Bardo.
The term “Bardo” comes from the Tibetan Buddhist idea of an interim dimension between incarnations — when we die, our soul enters this limbo state, this bardo, where it drifts until incarnating, again, into the human condition.
“The Alchemy of Sulphur” was made over six months in 2021 during the challenging quarantine era of social distancing and masks. Four of the five actors were vaccinated and since most of the scenes were filmed outdoors at a nearby wildlife refuge, we were happy to play in a mask-free environment.
Moment from 'Soror Mystica: Ritual Invocation of the Anima'' a ParaTheatrical ReSearch performance, 2017: courtesy A. Alli For more details on any of the above, see my site Vertical Pool, or my book, "State of Emergence".
As a love slave to the Muses, Antero has helped them create fourteen feature art films and numerous documentaries and shorts since 1992 and be reached here
Posted on Jan 10, 2022 - 09:56 PM
