Rob Nilsson

Sophisticated Acquaintance

Daniel Kremer

John Gross, Rob Nilsson

Mixing elements of narrative, experimental, pseudo-documentary and essayist cinema, Sophisticated Acquaintance tells the story of a tormented individual whose short life and long death were affected by a great many factors. Klaus Mann (John Gross), a present-day Philadelphia avatar of the real-life European author of Mephisto, lives in the shadow of his father, the eminent intellectual, novelist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann (Ernst Hohmann). When Klaus pens a controversial essay on "revolutionary suicide" and then acts on it, in protest of the world's selfishness, a group of his contemporaries speak up in filmed interviews about what led him down that path. It is a film about the creative process, the tragic depiction of a strained father-son relationship and, most of all, it is a film about individuality.

Scheme C6

Rob Nilsson

Cory DuVal, Monica Cortes Viharo

Bid is a self-styled urban commando determined to live outside the system and the law. A hustler in high end auto parts, he is homeless by choice. All his gear in a storage locker, he plies the city on a motorcycle, counting coup on the cops. Yve is Bid’s girl friend, bi-sexual, ambitious but without direction. Neither wants to compromise… but their friendship is about to go tragic.

Need

Rob Nilsson

Petite struggles to hold onto her relationship with Tyrone, a pool hustler, while Jane works as a stripper in the Gold Club. Lou, Jane’s mother and a heroin addict, is a renegade aging prostitute who works the streets and bars in defiance of the pimps. Francesca manages an escort service and does phone sex.

Noise

Rob Nilsson

Ben Malafide gets out of prison after 20 years and arrives in San Francisco by ferryboat. The Information Age assails him like a hive of angry bees. Noises, images, illusory hopes and unkept promises. Time itself seems to run forward and backward as Ben looks for the basics… a meal, a kind word, a bed for the night.

Attitude

Rob Nilsson

Spoddy (Disend), a small-time car thief and master auto mechanic, hates cars and harbors contempt for most people, especially the losers of this world. Directed by Rob Nilsson, this film employs the aesthetic of Direct Action Cinema, which Nilsson developed to allow cast and crew maximum freedom to work as a jazz ensemble, improvising dialogue and action in situations articulated by the director.

Chalk

Rob Nilsson

Edwin Johnson, Kelvin Han Yee

A unique film about pool.. Hustler vs newbie and interesting visuals. Very "90's"

Words for the Dying

Rob Nilsson

John Cale, Brian Eno

An 80-minute documentary following John Cale and Brian Eno in Moscow, London, and Wales during the creation of the album "Words for the Dying."

Go Together

Rob Nilsson

Go Together chronicles the sinking fortunes of an Oakland art cinema. Michelle, co- owner with her husband Denny, wants to continue programming the high minded films she believes in while her husband flirts with the idea of a highly profitable “vintage porn” night promoted by St. Tre, owner of a strip club and escort service. Meantime, St. Tre’s boy friend Ben Malafide aka Aldo Modisco, on parole from prison, begins to think that life in prison is preferable to the illusory “freedoms” of life in society.

Singing

Rob Nilsson

Jim Carpenter, Josh Peterson

Estranged from his longtime girlfriend, suburban accountant Perry wanders into the Tenderloin at night and is drawn into a series of dangerous and erotic encounters.

Northern Lights

John Hanson, Rob Nilsson

Robert Behling, Joe Spano

The bitter-sweet story of young lovers caught up in a political struggle waged by farmers against the grain trade, the banks, and the railroads. Set in North Dakota during 1915-16, a largely forgotten era of American history.

Security

Rob Nilsson

The tenants of a college dormitory regress into paranoia after a violent and seemingly random murder takes place just outside their window. A story based on actual events, the film is a stunning rendition of the nature of fear and insecurity among students in a newly dangerous environment; the university campus.

Ezer Kenegdo

Deniz Demirer, Daniel Kremer

Daniel Kremer, Deniz Demirer

Frictions develop when Yisroel "Izzy" Jonigkeyt, a Chassidic Jew from Crown Heights, travels to San Francisco to visit Polish-born Catholic friend Marek Wisniewski with the intent of discovering why a Bay Area art-world iconoclast named Harry Kierk seeks to destroy a lifetime's worth of his own work. As the visit progresses, Izzy and Marek discover for the first time that complex historical baggage impinges on their curious friendship and, soon, they begin to understand why Kierk is driven towards destruction. Continued encounters with Marek's vaguely anti-Semitic cousin Irek (who is their only gateway to contact Kierk) only compound these tensions.

Stroke

Rob Nilsson

Phil Berkowitz, a 55 year old North Beach poet and survivor of the days of wine and roses, has a stroke. Helpless, he lies in his flea bag hotel room in San Francisco’s Tenderloin until he is found by Johnny, his next door neighbor.

The Inheritance

Bobby Roth

Cari Shayne, Brigitta Dau

A beautiful orphan of mysterious parentage is asked by her adoptive family to help find a husband for their niece, but when two suitors both fall for the orphan girl, the niece instigates a scheme to discredit her in the eyes of her guardians. Based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott.

Love Twice

Rob Nilsson

"What do you do when the spark touches down-brief and hot?" So begins award-winning director Rob Nilsson's (Permission to Touch, MVFF 2015; A Bridge to a Border, MVFF 2014) provocative meditation on the Möbius relationship of fiction to reality, and the notion of creative control. In Love Twice, Luz and Ken are star-crossed lovers in screenwriter Sal's script, until their desire takes shape, inscribing itself into a movie of their own design. Risking his sanity to save the screenplay, Sal struggles to regain control of his characters and satisfy the demands of his producer Lester (legendary Velvet Underground founder John Cale), driving a wedge between the lovers with a desperate attempt to seduce Luz.

Signal 7

Rob Nilsson

Bill Ackridge, Dan Leegant

Marty and Speed are middle-aged San Francisco cabbies who hack to support their fading dream of making it as professional actors. Perpetually down on their luck, the friends find escape and camaraderie among their fellow drivers, playing cards and telling stories of backseat conquests, until one night when a dreaded "Signal 7" (driver's call for help) comes over the wire.