Maverick filmmaker, poet, and painter Rob Nilsson, the first American to win the Camera d'Or at Cannes for NORTHERN LIGHTS in 1979 and the Grand Prize at Sundance for HEAT AND SUNLIGHT in 1988, directs 45 feature films through his Direct Action Cinema, an improvisational, jazz-like method drawing from Wilhelm Reich, Stanislavski, and Uechi Ryu Karate. From shooting his first feature in Nigeria and establishing his painting studio in Equatorial Guinea, he journeys to his birthplace in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, music halls in Moscow, England, and Wales with John Cale and Brian Eno recording, Leon Trotsky's Ukrainian village site of a 1942 Nazi pogrom, and Israel to interview its last survivor. Young filmmakers in Jordan, Japan, South Africa, and Italy collaborate with him on Direct Action projects, while he reads poetry on East Bay railroad tracks, sharing insights from luminaries like Stacy Keach, Mstyslav Chernov, Al Nelson, Bobby Roth, Mark Fishkin, Nancy Hayes, and Dan Zastrow in an uncompromising life devoted to art.
| Directed by | Zhan Petrov |
| Country | USA |