ROB NILSSON is a San Francisco based director. Nilsson and co-director John Hanson won the Camera d’Or at Cannes for Northern Lights (1979) and Nilsson won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for Heat and Sunlight (1988). He is the first American film director to have won both awards. He is also creator of the Direct Action style of digital filmmaking taught in the Tenderloin Group Actor’s Ensemble, San Francisco, the Citizen Cinema Player’s Ensemble,
Berkeley, Celik Kayalar’s Film Acting Bay Area and in workshops around the world.

Nilsson is a pioneer in techniques of video to film transfer leading to today’s digital revolution. In 1985 Signal 7 was the first small format video feature blown up to film and distributed worldwide.

Nilsson retrospectives include: Mill Valley Film Festival, Pacific Film Archives, (Berkeley), Chicago Institute of Art, Resfest, (Seoul, Korea), Digital Talkies Festival, (New Dehli, India), MOV Festival and Cinemanila, (Manila, Philippines), Hong Kong International Film Festival, Kansas City Filmmaker’s Jubilee, Syracuse International Film Festival, Yerevan International Film Festival and the Moscow
International Film Festival.

Lifetime awards include: Ted M. Larson Award: Fargo International Film Festival, Indie Pioneer Award: Kansas City Filmmaker’s Jubilee,
Filmmaker of the Year award; Silver Lake Film Festival, Los Angeles, Milley Award from the city of Mill Valley for achievement in the Arts,
Master’s Award; Yerevan Film Festival and Lifetime Achievement Award; St. Louis International Film Festival, and Syracuse International Film Festival.
 
In 2008 the Filmmaker’s Alliance of Los Angeles presented him with the first annual Nilsson Award for excellence in the cinema, an award Nilsson now curates annually. In 2009 Nilsson received the San Francisco Film Critic’s Circle Marlon Riggs Award for courage and achievement in the making of the 9 @ Night Film Series. His book of
poetry, From a Refuee of Tristan Da Cunha was released in September 2007 and is available at Authorhouse.com. Nilsson has spent a lifetime as a poet, painter and filmmaker looking for ways to express his vision of “the way things seem to be.”

Friday, October 12
9:45 p.m.
Palace Theatre
Stroke
by Rob Nilsson
Special guest Rob Nilsson

Saturday, Octobe r 13
7 p.m.
Palace Theatre
What Happened Here
by Rob Nilsson
Special guest Rob Nilsson

Tickets $8/$6 AARP members with valid ID