Rob Nilsson

About Rob Nilsson

Rob Nilsson is an independent director, based in San Francisco. Nilsson and co-director John Hanson won the Camera d'Or at Cannes for Northern Lights (1978) and Nilsson won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for Heat and Sunlight (1987). He is the first American film director to have won both awards. In 2010, The Anthology Film Archive featured a retrospective of Nilsson's work with Cine Manifest, a film collective he co-founded in San Francisco during the 1970's. Works screened included Northern Lights (1978) and Signal 7 (1986).He is the creator of the Direct Action style of digital filmmaking taught in the Tenderloin yGroup Actor's Ensemble, San Francisco and featured in workshops conducted around the world. Nilsson is a pioneer in the techniques of video to film transfer which led to today's digital revolution. In 1985, Signal 7 (1986) was the first small-format video feature to be blown up to film and distributed around the world. Chalk (1996), his first feature with the Tenderloin Action Group (later the Tenderloin yGroup), a San Francisco inner city acting workshop, was featured in the Locarno and Toronto film festivals. It was voted one of the top films of the year by the Village Voice.The 9 @ Night film series, nine feature films sharing characters and circumstance with dialogue improvised by the Players, received the San Francisco Film Critic's Circle Marlon Riggs Award for courage and innovation in cinema in 2008. Seven of Nilsson's 9 @ Night film series, nine Direct Action digital features cast from the yGroup, Stroke (2000), Singing (2000), Scheme C6 (2001) and Need (2005), Pan (2006), Used (2007) and Go Together (2007) had their World Premieres at the Mill Valley International Film Festival. Attitude (2003) had its World Premiere at the Hong Kong International Film Festival in 2003 and Noise (2002) at the Virginia FF, also in 2003. The World Premiere marathon screening of all 9 feature films took place at the Harvard Film Archive in 2007.In collaboration with studio Malaparte in Japan, Nilsson completed a Direct Action digital feature film shot on Sagi Island off the coast of Hiroshima. Winter Oranges had its world premiere in 2000 at the Fukuoka Film Archives in Fukuoka and its US Premiere at the Mill Valley International Film Festival in 2000. In 2000, Nilsson shot another Direct Action digital feature (Samt) in Jordan, working with a cast of young Jordanians assembled by Zenid, a Jordanian institute for social development. Samt had its world premiere at the Mill Valley International Film Festival in 2004.In 2003 Nilsson, in conjunction with Resfest South Africa, shot Frank Dead Souls, a Direct Action digital feature shot in Cape Town locations with a cast selected from town and township. In 2005 the Pacific Film Archive hosted the World Premiere of Security, a Direct Action feature film produced during a Nilsson residency at the University of California, Berkeley. Security won the Audience Award at the Green Cine Internet Film Festival. In 2006 the Kansas City Filmmaker's Jubilee presented Opening, a Direct Action feature sponsored and produced in Kansas City by the festival, as its Opening Night film.Nilsson has directed A Town Has Turned to Dust (1998), a feature film for the USA Channel, from a script by Rod Serling. Presque Isle (2008), a narrative feature shot on locations in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Northern Wisconsin premiered at the Mill Valley FF in 2007. Nilsson directed screen legend Stacy...

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