I don't call myself an artist. Those who suckle the self-image of "Artist" risk becoming as legends in their own minds. Best to let others, the world, decide what to call you and then, go about the business of whatever you're here for. I am more like an interruptor. I am here to interrupt commonly held assumptions, expectations, and beliefs so I can experience new ways of seeing, thinking, relating, and feeling. This ritual of perception keeps me vulnerable to the fertile void, source of all creation, and its hilarious offspring, the singing womb of the Poetic Imagination.

My filmmaking journey began with tragedy. With the sudden death of my beautiful young daughter Zoe, in September of 1992, the worst thing that could ever happen to me, happened to me. Great losses sometimes come with gifts and, this loss gifted me with vision. The eyes of my eyes opened. I saw "death" as an illusion, an intellectual symbol for fear, social control, and oppression. I saw through the lies of society and glimpsed the eternal cycles of Life. People come and go but Life itself continues. I saw how we are all, at essence, Love; I've seen true Love trump Death.

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"The Oracle " (1993) and "Tragos" (2000)

Waves of grief and epiphany guided the scripting and production of my first feature, THE ORACLE (1993), about a cynical patriarch whose granddaughter, Ariadne, appears in his dreams as a guide on his final night on earth. As my own cynicism withered I became inspired by my friend Rob Brezsny's ideas of the interface between dreamtime and daytime realities. Together, we wrote and produced THE DRIVETIME (1995), about a federal time-travelling librarian from the year 2023 returning to 1999 via the dreams of a Seattle video activist shooting police riots. After the injustices of media scapegoating got my goat, I made TRAGOS (2000), a cyber-noir witch hunt tale of a fundamentalist Christian attourney who naively judges an urban tribe of technopagans as a satanic suicide cult -- with regretful results.

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"Hysteria" (2002) and "Under a Shipwrecked Moon" (2003)

The racial profiling immediately following the 9/11 attacks in NYC outraged the making of HYSTERIA (2002; written with Jakob Bokulich), about a Croatian Catholic soldier who mistakes a drug-induced hallucination for a visitation from the Holy Virgin Mary with disasterous consequences. After my fiftieth birthday, I returned to my Finnish roots in UNDER A SHIPWRECKED MOON (2003), an ancestral love story of a Finnish-American family visiting their hospitalized, comatose patriarch whose true love appears to him in dreams, beckoning towards the great beyond. The deep conflicts I have seen ravage mothers yearning to be artists, and artists yearning to be mothers, came into focus in THE GREATER CIRCULATION (2005). In this poetic docufiction set in Paris circa 1908, Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke transforms his grief over the sudden death of his dear friend, the artist Paula Modersohn-Becker, into his epic lament, "Requiem for a Friend".

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"The Greater Circulation" (2005) and "The Invisible Forest" (2008)

The national politics of terrorism triggered the making of my dark comedy, THE MIND IS A LIAR AND A WHORE (2007), where a quirky Berkeley household grapples the slippery slopes between actual and perceived threats during an alleged bioterrorist attack in their city. My lost sense of enchantment was restored in THE INVISIBLE FOREST (2008) where an insomniac theatre director (whom I portray) undergoes hypnosis in an attempt to stop reoccuring nightmares involving Surrealist playwright, Antonin Artaud. My darkly comic occult thriller, TO DREAM OF FALLING UPWARDS (2011), is a revenge tale made in response to the fraud surrounding a mentor's untimely death. In my most ambitious film to date, "Falling Upwards" tracks the parallel fates of an urban sex magickian and a Castaneda-style rural witch who unexpectedly meet to solve a vexing occult problem. I was itching to make a smaller, more intimate film in my outlaw romance noir, FLAMINGOS (2012), a heady cocktail chaser of crime, metaphysics, and amour fou.

"Flamingos" (2012)

Completing each of my little movies has proved exhilarating and exhausting. Between each one, I find myself doing next to nothing for a few months at a time. In these fallow periods, I usually return to my paratheatre roots for sustenance. These paratheatrical processes often times also inspire seed ideas for my movies, along with the production of unique paratheatre video documents: ARCHAIC COMMUNITY (1992), CRUX (1999), ORPHANS OF DELIRIUM (2004) and the forthcoming CIRCA 2012 (2012). Occasionally, I find renewal in crafting shorter works such as LILY IN LIMBO (1996), ROADKILL, (2001) and more abstract "videopoems" using text by Rilke, Neruda, H.D., Rimbaud, Plath and others as oblique narrative invocations (never as "poetry readings").

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Two VideoPoems: "Fears" (2001) and "Lily in Limbo" (1996)

I am a "make-do filmmaker". So far, all my movies have been self--funded and/or co-produced with my peers. Why apply and wait for corporate grants or studio funding when I can start creating with my own resources? Not including the time it takes to raise funds, each film typically takes six to twelve months to complete. After years of submitting my work to festivals with no reward, I have chosen to bypass them in lieu of the more gratifying option of four-walling, of booking my films in limited runs at west coast arthouses (also see Screenings & Bookings section near bottom of this page); sometimes universities book my films. These screenings gain promotional support from the numerous critical reviews posted at filmthreat.com, mysticalmovieguide.com and mindjack.com. My films are also available on dvd at this webpage.

"To Dream of Falling Upwards" (2011)

With the exception of my short works, most of what I have done has been highly collaborative and would never have happened without the talent, skill and energy of many others. I am especially grateful for the support and talents of my wife, the singer/composer/actress, Sylvi Alli (since 1990) and my highly skilled editor, Chris Odell (since 2000).

At some point I would like my work to achieve more exposure in Europe and wherever people are still open to new ways of seeing. Until then, I continue making the media I have to make or burn out trying. What is success to me? Zero compromise. Money? What I spend on my next project. Fame? Grease for the publicity machines. Love? What makes life worth living. Truth? Everything beyond advertising. God? Everything beyond that.

truly,
ANTERO ALLI
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