Rob Nilsson

Recently added

The Defender of Sitting Ducks
1
After his mom leaves him and his little brother, Aaron is forced to help his abusive step-father with his credit card scam. Set in the East Bay Area, California - this surreal coming of age story follows four young people clumsily learning how to interact with the world around them.
The Inheritance
5.7

The Inheritance

Apr 06, 1997
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.
Drama
It's a Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie Point
1
Worlds collide in this unconventional essay film, when filmmaker, film historian, and archivist Daniel Kremer seamlessly edits Michelangelo Antonioni's legendary but controversial counterculture art film Zabriskie Point (1970) into the same narrative universe as Stanley Kramer's madcap epic comedy extravaganza It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). In creating these new sequences, Kremer comes to recognize that the exercise effortlessly draws cultural and historical parallels in twentieth-century American life that echo in present-day America. The editorial mashups weave a tangled web of social and cinematic history that root our notions of Americana in the mythology of the desert. As Kremer expounds in his narration on these often astonishing and sometimes shocking associations, his very personal ties to the subject matter become manifest.
Documentary
Berkeley
6.5

Berkeley

Oct 08, 2005
Just as sex, drugs, rock & roll, hippies, and Vietnam enter our consciousness, so it does for Ben Sweet, the shy, 18-year-old son of conservative businessman, Sy. Ben enters UC Berkeley in 1966 to avoid the draft, but finds himself smack in the middle of a home-grown revolution.
Drama
Cine Manifest
6.5

Cine Manifest

Jan 01, 2006
Documentary - With David Schickele's dreamy, retro soundscape, CINE MANIFEST captures a resilient group of artists reminiscing about a time when people weren't afraid to fight for their ideals, while also creating a stirring tribute to American independent filmmaking. - Eugene Corr, Peter Gessner, John Hanson
Documentary
The Fourth Movement
1

The Fourth Movement

Oct 14, 2017
Four interlocking stories with a Jazz theme. Four Women go out to visit the sites of the jazz clubs where Lou, 65 and dying of cancer, claims she once performed as a young singer. It's election night, Nov. 8, 2016 and the women follow the results on their cell phones. It's also opening night for the C Flat jazz club where they end the evening up as their worst fears are realized: Trump has won the election.
Drama
Sacred Blood
2

Sacred Blood

Oct 16, 2015
For Natia, firing bullets at her sister's head and narrowly missing is all in a days work. After taking over the family business, her sharp shooting act is the only thing keeping the declining Orbeliani Circus afloat. When a stranger and his dog drifts into her home town of Batumi, Georgia from the Black Sea, peddling his own act, Natia wonders if a change of fortune is finally on the horizon. As the circus's prospects begin to rise so do suspicions that the stranger is not who he seems. A fateful interaction forces changes upon Natia and she must leave her family to protect them from what she is becoming. Soon, she is traveling to a different city-by-the-bay, San Francisco, where confrontation and opportunity release a violent darkness rooting within her. Fighting against her loneliness and the rules of this new world, she is befriended by a troubled young artist with an innocent soul. Will this tenuous love lead her out of the darkness? Or, are they merely two halves of broken whole?
Drama
Ezer Kenegdo
4.5

Ezer Kenegdo

Oct 27, 2017
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.
Drama
Sophisticated Acquaintance
8
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.
Drama
Copycat
6.5

Copycat

Oct 27, 1995
Le docteur Helen Hudson, psychiatre reputee et auteur d'ouvrage a succès sur les serial killers, est victime d'un de ses "héros" qui l'agresse sauvagement a l'issue d'une causerie. Fortement traumatisée, Helen vit recluse dans son appartement de San Francisco et n'entretient plus que de rares relations avec le monde extérieur. Jusqu'au jour ou elle découvre a la une d'un journal la photo d'une jeune fille victime d'un serial Killer. D'autres crimes ont lieu et Helen se rend vite compte qu'elle est a nouveau en danger.
Thriller
Amanda
3.5

Amanda

Jan 01, 1996
A small boy is hurt by a horse on his father's ranch and he refuses to even be near one ever again. When a storyteller called Seven arrives with his huge imposing horse Amanda, everything changes.
Adventure
Baja Oklahoma
6.9

Baja Oklahoma

Feb 20, 1988
Juanita Hutchins works at Texas bar, but she aspires to be a country songwriter. When she's not looking after her impulsive daughter, Candy, or vouching for her promiscuous friend, Doris Steadman, she's trying to maintain some semblance of a romantic life. As Juanita prepares to make the leap to Nashville, her former boyfriend, Slick Henderson, returns to town, further complicating her situation.
Comedy
Good Men
1

Good Men

Oct 04, 2024
After the birth of his grandson, Bobby Roth undertakes a cinematic investigation as to what constitutes being a "good man" in today's world. This voyage of discovery leads him to interview more than fifty of his friends, both men and women who he considers to be "good people," about their views on everything from how they were parented to their thoughts on feminism, change, and regrets they might have. Their answers both surprises and enlighten both the viewers and Bobby, himself.
Documentary
On the Edge
5.9

On the Edge

May 02, 1986
In one final attempt to achieve victory, an aging professional runner is training vigorously for a very tough marathon race.
Drama
Northern Lights
6.7

Northern Lights

Nov 17, 1978
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.
Drama
Imbued
1

Imbued

Oct 10, 2009
Don tries to solve a beautiful young woman's problems.
Drama
Imbued
1

Imbued

Oct 10, 2009
Don tries to solve a beautiful young woman's problems.
Drama
Imbued
1

Imbued

Oct 10, 2009
Don tries to solve a beautiful young woman's problems.
Drama
Center Divide
1

Center Divide

Oct 10, 2021
Center Divide is the second film in Rob Nilsson's multi-character Nomad Trilogy. In the first film, Arid Cut (2019), our refugees of the American Dream leave the city. In Center Divide, with no more West to escape to, they're now on the road heading East.
Drama
Center Divide
1

Center Divide

Oct 10, 2021
Center Divide is the second film in Rob Nilsson's multi-character Nomad Trilogy. In the first film, Arid Cut (2019), our refugees of the American Dream leave the city. In Center Divide, with no more West to escape to, they're now on the road heading East.
Drama
Arid Cut
1

Arid Cut

Oct 12, 2019
Sky-high housing costs, rents no one can pay, urban development, and street crime make life difficult for RV dwellers in Berkeley, California. City bureaucrats collaborate with real estate agents to gentrify neighborhoods forcing out already marginalized people living in cars, trucks, and RVs. With no more West to escape to, they contemplate turning back East.
Drama
Signal Seven
5.5

Signal Seven

May 30, 1986
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.
Drama
Signal Seven
5.5

Signal Seven

May 30, 1986
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.
Drama
A Town Has Turned to Dust
4
In a futuristic desert hamlet, a ruthless town boss lynches a falsely accused Native American teen, setting the stage for revolt and a clash with a troubled, drunken sheriff.
Thriller
Northern Lights
6.7

Northern Lights

Nov 17, 1978
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.
Drama
Northern Lights
6.7

Northern Lights

Nov 17, 1978
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.
Drama
Northern Lights
6.7

Northern Lights

Nov 17, 1978
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.
Drama
Faultline
1

Faultline

Oct 11, 2022
A ten-year drought brings local ranches to the brink of disaster. The search for Bert Neville takes its toll on Rail and Mitra. They break up and Rail continues on alone. Travis, Ziggy and Karin hitchhike in high country and get lost in a burnt out forest. Taylor travels with Ukrainian gallery owners looking for the prototypical western artist. Dane introduces Rail to his mother, Violet, a full blood hewise, who remembers the horrors of the Indian schools. Her ex-husband Bedford refuses to give his real name to a white man. Her daughter April broadcasts a tribal blog on indian affairs. Dane and Rail are stopped by local militia types. Entrepreneurs propose a geothermal plant to ranchers and locals divided by political views. Rail finds an old map in an abandoned ranch and Mitra, now recovered, rejoins him. Is the mystery of Bert Neville about to be solved?
Drama
Love Twice
5

Love Twice

Jan 01, 2016
"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.
Drama
The Fourth Movement
1

The Fourth Movement

Oct 14, 2017
Four interlocking stories with a Jazz theme. Four Women go out to visit the sites of the jazz clubs where Lou, 65 and dying of cancer, claims she once performed as a young singer. It's election night, Nov. 8, 2016 and the women follow the results on their cell phones. It's also opening night for the C Flat jazz club where they end the evening up as their worst fears are realized: Trump has won the election.
Drama
Faultline
1

Faultline

Oct 11, 2022
A ten-year drought brings local ranches to the brink of disaster. The search for Bert Neville takes its toll on Rail and Mitra. They break up and Rail continues on alone. Travis, Ziggy and Karin hitchhike in high country and get lost in a burnt out forest. Taylor travels with Ukrainian gallery owners looking for the prototypical western artist. Dane introduces Rail to his mother, Violet, a full blood hewise, who remembers the horrors of the Indian schools. Her ex-husband Bedford refuses to give his real name to a white man. Her daughter April broadcasts a tribal blog on indian affairs. Dane and Rail are stopped by local militia types. Entrepreneurs propose a geothermal plant to ranchers and locals divided by political views. Rail finds an old map in an abandoned ranch and Mitra, now recovered, rejoins him. Is the mystery of Bert Neville about to be solved?
Drama
Arid Cut
1

Arid Cut

Oct 12, 2019
Sky-high housing costs, rents no one can pay, urban development, and street crime make life difficult for RV dwellers in Berkeley, California. City bureaucrats collaborate with real estate agents to gentrify neighborhoods forcing out already marginalized people living in cars, trucks, and RVs. With no more West to escape to, they contemplate turning back East.
Drama
Love Twice
5

Love Twice

Jan 01, 2016
"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.
Drama
Next Week in Bologna
1

Next Week in Bologna

Jun 17, 2016
Next Week in Bologna is a tongue-in-cheek nod to Italian Neo-Realism, shot in Rob Nilsson's Direct Action style. A pickpocket cinema projectionist in Bologna, Italy, narrates three intertwining stories of tourists who visit his city one summer. A timid adjunct professor from Australia receives word from a mysterious stranger about his imminent death while nervously preparing to present his paper on the classic film Last Year at Marienbad. An apostate ex-priest gifts a naive and destitute young couple with a camcorder...for possibly lecherous purposes. And, lastly, the pickpocket projectionist narrator pursues his own adventure with a lovely but understandably cautious Icelandic girl.
Comedy
Next Week in Bologna
1

Next Week in Bologna

Jun 17, 2016
Next Week in Bologna is a tongue-in-cheek nod to Italian Neo-Realism, shot in Rob Nilsson's Direct Action style. A pickpocket cinema projectionist in Bologna, Italy, narrates three intertwining stories of tourists who visit his city one summer. A timid adjunct professor from Australia receives word from a mysterious stranger about his imminent death while nervously preparing to present his paper on the classic film Last Year at Marienbad. An apostate ex-priest gifts a naive and destitute young couple with a camcorder...for possibly lecherous purposes. And, lastly, the pickpocket projectionist narrator pursues his own adventure with a lovely but understandably cautious Icelandic girl.
Comedy
Prairie Fire
1

Prairie Fire

Jan 01, 1977
The first short film in John Hanson and Rob Nilsson's "Prairie Trilogy"
Documentary
Rebel Earth
1

Rebel Earth

Jan 01, 1980
The second part of John Hanson and Rob Nilsson's Prairie Trilogy
Survivor
1

Survivor

Jan 02, 1980
The third part of John Hanson and Rob Nilsson's Prairie Trilogy
Words for the Dying
1

Words for the Dying

Jan 01, 1993
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."
Documentary
Chalk
5

Chalk

Sep 07, 1996
A unique film about pool.. Hustler vs newbie and interesting visuals. Very "90's"
Drama
Chalk
5

Chalk

Sep 07, 1996
A unique film about pool.. Hustler vs newbie and interesting visuals. Very "90's"
Drama
Singing
1

Singing

Oct 10, 2000
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.
Drama
Scheme C6
1

Scheme C6

Oct 12, 2001
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.
Drama
Scheme C6
1

Scheme C6

Oct 12, 2001
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.
Drama
Scheme C6
1

Scheme C6

Oct 12, 2001
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.
Drama
Singing
1

Singing

Oct 10, 2000
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.
Drama
The Method
1

The Method

Feb 03, 1987
Anna Reringer leaves her husband and goes to San Francisco to fulfill her dream of becoming an actress.
Drama
Stroke
6

Stroke

Oct 07, 2000
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.
Winter Oranges
1

Winter Oranges

Oct 14, 2000
A resident (Ryuki "Duke" Tenmaya) of a small Japanese island dreams of leaving his wife, heading to Tokyo and pursuing an acting career.
Noise
1

Noise

Oct 09, 2002
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.
Samt
1

Samt

Oct 07, 2004
A young Jordanian woman from a small town outside Amman seeks greater personal and cultural freedom from a traditional family wants to attend a youth conference in Petra.
Attitude
1

Attitude

May 14, 2003
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.
Drama
Used
1

Used

Oct 13, 2007
Ben Malafide has been in prison for 20 years. His nerves are shot, his feelings shriveled. St. Tre, who runs an escort service and a strip club has taken him in. Ben feels he has nothing to offer her. She feels kinship as a fellow outsider, and loves him as a twin, a lost soul. But St. Tre has a weakness. She is a card player, and has amassed large gambling debts, mostly to Kenny Nordstrom who manages Schumacher’s gambling clubs in Northern California. Kenny is secretly in love with St. Tre but, afraid to show it, he keeps everything on a business level.
Security
1

Security

Sep 11, 2005
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.
Pan
1

Pan

Oct 08, 2006

Pan

A small band of dysfunctional renegade homeless people led by charismatic "Pan" befriends a lonely youngster, a fatherless "Bobby" who stumbles upon their homeless encampment nestled by the railroad tracks. The busy socialite mother, Barbara instantly disapproves of "Bobby" & "Pan's" budding friendship, while secretly and somewhat unwillingly developing feelings for Pan.
Opening
1

Opening

Apr 14, 2006
A diverse group of people at a gala art gallery opening are confined to the gallery when tornadoes hit. Dramatic interactions are heightened by infidelity discovered, artistic vision corrupted, greed, and commercial banditry. Questions of what art is and how it is important to a community are explored.
Need
3.5

Need

Oct 13, 2005
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.
Go Together
1

Go Together

Oct 13, 2007
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.
Beverly Hills 90210
7.375

Beverly Hills 90210

May 17, 2000
Brandon et Brenda Walsh viennent de quitter leur Minnesota natal pour emménager dans un luxueux quartier résidentiel de Los Angeles, le célèbre quartier de Beverly Hills. Les premiers jours sont difficiles au lycée, où ils doivent d'intégrer parmi des lycéens avec lesquels ils ont a priori peu de choses en commun.... Mais Brenda fait la connaissance de Kelly et Donna, qui vont devenir ses meilleures amies, tandis que Brandon se rapproche de Dylan, Steve et Andrea.
Drama
Deux flics à Miami
7.4

Deux flics à Miami

Jun 28, 1989
Miami, c'est d'un côté soleil, plage et fête, mais de l'autre, c'est drogue, corruption et autres trafics. Sonny et Ricardo sont deux policiers bien décidés à faire régner la justice dans cette ville. L'un vit sur un yacht et conduit une Ferrari, l'autre est venu de New York pour retrouver l'assassin de son frère.
Crime
Profiler
7

Profiler

Jul 01, 2000
Profiler au FBI, Samantha Waters est capable de visualiser un crime à travers les yeux du tueur et de sa victime, à partir de ce qu'elle relève sur la scène du meurtre. Grâce à ce don, elle traque l'assassin de son mari.
Crime
Profiler
6

Profiler

Sep 29, 1996
American Playhouse is an anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.
Drama