night and the city: Indie Maverick Rob Nilsson's Nine-Film Panorama of Urban Anomie/By Dennis Harvey

Keeping in the tradition of the last two articles discussed, I chose to look at this article on Rob Nilsson. The table of contents referred to this article as being about “the vast canvas of San Francisco's under-the-radar grassroots maverick.” While for a minute I marveled at the staying power of the word maverick and it's ability intrigue after being used to the point of redundant meaning loss in the last election, I realized that this topic was something that might be worth reading about; it was something that I might not easily come across it elsewhere. And it was. In fact this article about Nilsson himself, and the works he considered to be “the most important cinema made in America in this era”, his own 9 @ Night, was very interesting.
Nilsson was born and raised in Wisconsin and the San Francisco Bay Area. He came across filmmaking on a lark while teaching a group of Nigerian high school students and has been making a prolific and impressive amount of films ever since. Similarly to Oshima, Nilsson rejects the idea of working within studio standards and guidelines. He believes that American film currently serves to distract people from their “boredom” and does nothing to “feed their souls”. Nilsson created a film collective/manifesto called Direct Action. He did this before Von Trier created the Dogme 95, but got much less exposure. His current group is called the Tenderloin yGroup. It is a group that consists of streetpeople from San Francisco's Tenderloin distract as well as others from every sort of background and talent. It was these people that came together to create Nilsson's 9 @ Night.
9 @ Night is nine separate feature length films that all work together as a cohesive picture of the city and those that are forgotten. They use primary non professional actors and were all shot with little money. They have only been shown in their correct order and entirety a few times but they will hopefully be achieving wider distribution through cinematiques and art movie houses. Hopefully they come to Milwaukee so we can have a chance to see the “most important” works in American cinema.
I do, however, think that “the most important cinema” is a big leap and much too broad of a statement for an artist or anyone to make. Nilsson is basically negating everyones work but his own. He believes that current American filmmakers are “either confused, lost, or irrelevant”. Though it seems he is doing amazing grassroots cinema, it still seems a bit much to presume. By making this statement he is saying that the whole industry of films and film academia is studying and making things that are essentially useless, or without at least without real value. (At least when looking at American films of this era.) It is too narrow of an opinion for me to take stock in. I do think that many movies do simply help temporarily stave off boredom, but there are many works of relevance that can be seen, such as some of the video exhibits residing within the Stop. Look. Listen. exhibit. Perhaps by making this statement he is trying to move more people to adopt more grassroots efforts into their process and move away from the mainstream
I do find Nilsson to be an inspiring filmmaker. He manages to gather talent and tell the stories that he feels necessary on low to no budget. Like Clementi and Oshima he is a bit of a renegade filmmaker. This is important in todays age where people are currently barraged with media symbols created by a homogeneous industry on a minute by minute basis. It is very easy to sink into a feeling that they only way to work in films and media is to become part of this massive multi billion dollar industrial machine. In Milwaukee, the “indie” movie theatres have taken to showing more mainstream films such as Sex And The City and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There just aren't too many venues for lesser known relevant work. Seeing people doing films off of the grid and reading about them in a publication available in many bookstores is heartening. It helps to make it feel like it is possible to avoid the conglomerations and lead a more fulfilling career life. It's also always nice when people achieve some sort of success coming from Wisconsin. When walking around exhibits and seeing the tags of New York, LA, and San Francisco over and over again I feel my shoulders slump and I actually get a bit weary, sometimes. It's disheartening that people usually don't produce out of their native areas. It was good that Nilsson has come from WI, gone to San Fran and been productive, but wish he could have done it here.