All films are available for free viewing by clicking
the ---> viewing link in each movie section below.

Due to the high compression of online video transfers these
films may look and sound better on your computer screens with
headphones than on larger smart TV screens. Higher resolution
DVDs (reasonably priced) are now available by clicking this.

NOTE: If you'd like to share your responses to any of these films
I'd love to read them: verticalsource@gmail.com - thanks! - Antero

~ IMAGES BELOW LINK TO PRODUCTION DETAILS ~

---> PREMIERE <---
"THE ALCHEMY OF SULPHUR" (November 2021)

"THE ALCHEMY OF SULPHUR" (2021; 107 min.) A Psychological Romance. Hope is writing a short story for ArtLit magazine. When her boyfriend relationship unravels, she attempts to escape heartbreak by writing herself into her story as a character who falls in love with Phineas, the story's central character. As her story develops, Hope's romantic literary projections begin to mysteriously trigger a series of real world encounters catalyzing her spiritual awakening. THE ALCHEMY OF SULPHUR explores the creative writing process as an insurrection of the Poetic Imagination poised at the crossroads between Life and Art. Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Cinematography, editing, screenplay, and direction by Antero. Click images for production details.

The rarefied world of Alli’s characters points to a more substantial
reality than the empty-image limbo the masses inhabit. Alli’s vision
typically reaches beyond materiality to a timeless, unrestricted zone
forever on hand to inspire those of us out of step with, or awake
to more than, the zeitgeist. - Observer of Times, Australia

---> viewing link

THE TRAILER

Filmmaker Vision Statement

"THE VANISHING FIELD" (2020)

"THE VANISHING FIELD" (2020; 72 min.) A Monastic Drama. Disenchanted with the corruption of society, vlogger Jakob X joins a Zen monastery where he has a spontaneous but disturbing out of body experience. Intrigued, he rebels against traditional Zen meditation practice to pursue the more esoteric dimension of astral travel where he discovers bizarre new worlds that shake the very ground of his being. Filmed almost entirely at the Great Vow Zen monastery in Oregon, THE VANISHING FIELD was mostly improvised on site with the monks playing themselves. Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Story by Antero. Cinematography, editing, and direction by Antero. Click either image for production details.

"Alli has the sense and the courage to engage directly with the reality
of life in a monastery. It is his exceptional accomplishment to make
this adventure riveting and suspenseful without relying on a convoluted
plot. “The Vanishing Field” is a poetic investigation of very real
experience, not a science fiction fantasy. It is also a gem of a
motion picture and an astonishingly original masterpiece."
- Charles Kruger for Flickstorm, San Francisco

---> viewing link

THE TRAILER

Filmmaker Vision Statement

"OUT OF THE WOODS" (2015/recut in 2021; 87 min. USA) An Uncommon Love Story. Sharing his life story with a documentary filmmaker, a former professional mentalist confides how he temporarily died after a terrible accident and was reborn with an uncanny talent for reading minds. What he failed to mention was how an imaginary friend from his childhood, a mischievous feminine entity, brought him back to life by inhabiting and animating his body. OUT OF THE WOODS follows a man’s journey down the rabbit hole of haunted dreams and childhood memories to find his one true love. Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Edited with Chris Odell. Cinematography, screenplay, and direction by Antero. Click images for production details.

“Out of the Woods” carries the virtues of Alli’s canon: handsome
cinematography (by the filmmaker), a screenplay that is not afraid
to take the viewer into difficult intellectual terrain and devious flashes
of dry humor. Sylvi Alli, the filmmaker’s collaborator, is here as the
elusive dream entity and as a creative force on the haunting soundtrack".
- Phil Hall for Cinema Crazed, New York

---> viewing link

THE TRAILER

Filmmaker Vision Statement

"THE BOOK OF JANE" (2013; 117 min.) An Urban Feminist Fable. Alice, a Professor of Comparative Religion, is writing a book on pre-Hellenic goddess mythologies. One day she meets Jane, an enigmatic older woman who roams the university campus, sleeps under a bridge, and rattles Alice with her disturbing insights. THE BOOK OF JANE is a story of three women attempting to embody the values of an ancient culture at a cost none of them expected. Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Edited with Chris Odell. Cinematography, screenplay, and direction by Antero. Click images for production details.

"The concepts raised in “The Book of Jane” are profound
and often complex, and Alli’s screenplay is rich with dialogue
that clearly requires a great deal of concentration to absorb
the many points being raised. This film is also one of Alli’s
crowning achievements." - filmthreat.com (5 stars)

---> viewing link

EXCERPT #1
EXCERPT #2

"The Making of Jane"

"FLAMINGOS" (2012; 90 min.) An Outlaw Romance Noir. Twin sisters Beatrice and Zoe are in love with Ray, a bank robbing junkie obsessed with apocalyptic visions. Though Beatrice and Ray are married, Ray absconds with free spirited Zoe after a bank heist to the Flamingo motel where they plot their future together. FLAMINGOS is a heady cocktail chaser of amour fou, metaphysical mayhem and love on the lam. Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Edited with Chris Odell. Cinematography, screenplay, and direction by Antero. Click images for production details.

"FLAMINGOS is thoroughly remarkable in the way it packs dense,
engaging layers of honest emotional and spiritual musings in an
extremely constricting framework. Sometimes the most intense
spiritual journeys happen when one has nowhere to go." -
Mike Everleth, Underground Film Journal, Los Angeles

---> viewing link

BEHIND THE SCENES

3 MIN. EXCERPT #1

3 MIN. EXCERPT #2

"TO DREAM OF FALLING UPWARDS" (2011/recut 2021; 2 hours) A Zany Occult Thriller. The elder Magus of an occult order is on his deathbed when his estranged biological son fraudulently inherits his temple. Jack Mason, the rightful heir, is outraged, plots revenge and soon enters an underworld of professional psychopaths, desert brujas, and a twist of fate he never saw coming. TO DREAM OF FALLING UPWARDS is a harrowing, hilarious collision between the contrary worlds of urban and rural sorcery wrapped in a murder mystery. Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Edited with Chris Odell. Cinematography, screenplay, and direction by Antero. Click above images for production details.

"The complex, expertly constructed story involves a struggle
for succession, a murder, and a demonic possession. The twists
of the story kept me glued to the screen through several viewings.
Absolutely riveting, the cinematography is gorgeous, the film's
great depth and power will keep you thinking for a very long time."
- David Finkelstein for filmthreat.com (4 stars out of 5), New York

---> viewing link

THE TRAILER

 
Nudity, sexual situations, drug use.

VISION STATEMENT

"THE INVISIBLE FOREST" (2008; 111 min.) A Hypnogogic Experimental Drama. Alex, an experimental theatre director (Antero Alli), brings his troupe into a forest to rehearse his vision of French Surrealist Antonin Artaud's magic theatre of ghosts, gods, and demons. In the woods, he is haunted by series of disturbing dreams featuring Artaud as a wild woman. With his sanity pushed to its limits, Alex visits a psychotherapist who suggests hypnotic regression to remedy his problem. THE INVISIBLE FOREST is the filmmaker's most personal and experimental film to date. Edited with Chris Odell. Written & directed by Antero. Additional text by William Shakespeare and Antonin Artaud.  Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Click images for production details.

"The film incites and dares the viewer to let go of concepts and accept
the risky adventure of following the free, unimpeded energies of the
body and mind. Since, in real life, Alli is engaged in paratheatrical
research, the film’s fictional story is constructed out of documentary
elements." - David Finkelstein, filmthreat.com (4 stars), New York

---> viewing link

THE TRAILER 

DIRECTOR'S BLOG

"THE MIND IS A LIAR AND A WHORE" (2007; 91 min.) An Anxious X-mas Comedy. A quirky Berkeley household - a heartbroken Astrologer, a closet Satanist, an Inuit opera singer, a Gulf War vet, and a WebCast diva - are forced indoors during a citywide lock down after to an alleged bioterrorist attack. Havoc and hilarity prevail as they all grasp for conclusions about what they think is happening during their escalating uncertainty. THE MIND IS A LIAR AND A WHORE is a prescient tale mirroring the anxiety of the current era of government-imposed social restrictions. Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Edited with Chris Odell. Written & directed by Antero. Click images for production details.

"Smart dialogue, compassionate and perceptive character writing,
a heightened sense of both the comic and dramatic potential of the
situation, and powerful performances all come together in a film where
comedy and drama serve as a means to explore the roots of what it means
to be human, and live in a dangerous and highly unpredictable world."
David Finkelstein, filmthreat.com (4 stars) New York

---> viewing link

THE TRAILER 

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

"THE GREATER CIRCULATION" (2005; 93 min.) A Poetic Docufiction. Over three fever-dream nights in the Hotel Biron, Paris 1908, poet Rainer Maria Rilke encounters what he believes is the ghost of his friend, artist Paula Modersohn-Becker, who died shortly after birthing her first child. Rilke transforms his grief into an epic prose work, "Requiem for a Friend", about a woman at the crossroads between Art and Motherhood. Meanwhile, a hundred years later, three women prepare to stage Rilke's "Requiem" as an avant garde performance ritual. THE GREATER CIRCULATION is the filmmaker's tribute to the poet, Rilke. Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Edited with Chris Odell. Written & directed by Antero with additional text by Rainer Maria Rilke (Stephen Mitchell, trans.). Click images for production details.

"…a deep, provocative and often disturbing drama which poses
questions of love, art, mortality and grief with the grace and
majesty of Rilke’s work, “The Greater Circulation” is among
Alli's finest works. Anyone seeking lessons on how to create a
wholly original work of motion picture genius can start here."
- Phil Hall, filmthreat.com (5 stars out of 5) New York

---> viewing link


4 MIN. EXCERPT
3 MIN. EXCERPT

"UNDER A SHIPWRECKED MOON" (2003; 96 min.) An Ancestral Romance. The power of a long-buried family secret is unleashed when the extreme rituals of punk rocker young Jari catapults him into the spirit realm in search of his father, a ship captain who drowned in the Bering Sea. Joining Jari on his dream quest is the spirit of his grandmother Sisu, a Finnish sorceress. UNDER A SHIPWRECKED MOON is a surrealistic fable of true love, giant hedgehogs and the mystical depths of ancestral bonds.  Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Edited with Chris Odell. Cinematography, screenplay, and direction by Antero. Click images for production details.

“Under a Shipwrecked Moon,” presents the classic mythic tale
of a hero on a vision quest, but places it in a naturalistic setting
where the fabulous and the visionary are seen as a part of daily
life providing a metaphorical guide to the forces underpinnings
life’s dramas. In doing so, Alli enables the viewer to build a bridge
between the quotidian and the visionary, the living and the dead".
- David Finkelstein, filmthreat.com (4 stars) New York

---> viewing link

THE TEASER 

THE STORY BEHIND THE MOON

"HYSTERIA" (2002; 83 min.) A Magical Realist Drama. During the Serb-Croatian war (1991-95), Ikar - a young Catholic soldier - unwittingly drinks hallucinogenic datura tea triggering a full blown vision (or hallucination?) of the Holy Virgin Mary who gives him a mission. To fulfill his religious destiny, he migrates westward to Oakland California and starts pugilist training in preparation for his incendiary apotheosis. HYSTERIA was made in the months following the 9/11 attacks in NYC. Written and produced by Antero Alli and Jakob Bokulich (who also plays Ikar). Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Edited with Chris Odell.Cinematography and direction by Antero. Click images for production details.

"HYSTERIA" is a profound and frequently disturbing work
of intelligence that forces viewers to weigh in on emotional
issues that haunted America as a result of the tragic events
of 9/11: the damage created by religious dogma, the terror
in dealing with inner fears, and the inability to justify a societal
mind frame built on a foundation of selfish behavior."
- Phil Hall, filmthreat.com (5 stars out of 5) New York

---> viewing link

TRAILER #1
TRAILER #2

BEHIND THE SCENES

"TRAGOS" (2000/01; 105 min.) A Cyber-Noir Witch Hunt.   An urban tribe of technopagans perform their ecstatic rites in "Tragos", a virtual reality program. One night their leader, Bella Luxor, overamps the program and goes blind, while her sister Vivika is tragically dies. Robert Logos, a fundamentalist Christian attorney views the VR device as a suicide machine used by a Satanic suicide cult. He hires an unemployed actor posing as a detective to gather evidence for their demise. TRAGOS explores the contemporary tragedy of soul loss in an increasingly virtualized, hyper-digital society. Soundtrack by Sylvi Alli & others. Edited with Chris Odell. Written & directed by Antero. Click images for production details.

"TRAGOS is an intellectual adrenaline rush of hypnotic strength
and emotional depth. Alli envisions a future where the desire to
escape from government and media thought-control drives people
underground. Though perhaps the future is a lot closer than we think,
since the parallels between Tragos' futuristic tale and the assault on
many basic contemporary liberties seems too close for comfort."
- Phil Hall for filmthreat.com (4 stars out of 5) New York

---> viewing link

EXCERPT #1 
EXCERPT #2

ON THE MAKING OF TRAGOS

"THE DRIVETIME" (1995; 86 min.) A Cyber-Fi Experiment. In the hopes of obtaining politically sensitive video footage of police riots, a federal archivist from the year 2023 uses a flawed Time Travel device to return to Seattle circa 1999 via the dreams of a video activist. THE DRIVETIME was created during the birth of the internet within the seething underground Seattle subculture, circa 1995, four years before the WTO riots of Seattle 1999. Edited with John Comerford. Written and produced with Rob Brezsny. Cinematography and direction by Antero. Click images for production details.

"One of the most chilling yet innovative cinematic essays on
the flaws of today's technology-obsessed society. This work
should be seen by anyone who mistakenly believes that all's
calm and well in our little digital sphere. Alli's iconoclastic view
of a future world projects a dazzling stream-of-consciousness
skein of technical wizardry and provocative wordplay."
- WIRED Magazine

---> viewing link

EXCERPT #1
EXCERPT #2

VISION STATEMENT

"THE ORACLE" (1993; recut in 2021; 58:30 min) An Afterlife Family Drama. On the final day of his life, a cynical patriarch lapses into an intermittent coma where his sleep is interrupted by spontaneous mutterings. Much to the bewilderment of his anxious daughter tending his bedside, his mutterances are pure poetry (from "The Book of Questions" by Pablo Neruda). His grandaughter, Ariadne appears in the internal landscape of his dreams as a guide to the great beyond. Meanwhile, his estranged son Brandon visits him and finds himself at the center of an ancient ritual of ancestral healing. THE ORACLE is the filmmaker's debut feature (see "Director's Notes" below). Cinematography, editing, screenplay, and direction by Antero. Click images for production details.

.The Oracle is a visionary exploration of an elderly bedridden man's
interior journey toward death and beyond. It's also a sometimes
humorous, sometimes heartrending portrayal of his family's changing
perceptions of the processes of death. The film resonates meaningfully
long after you've left the theater. - Paul Goetz, Washington Free Press

---> viewing link

5 MINUTE EXCERPT

DIRECTOR'S NOTES
"THE ORACLE", my debut feature art film, was made in the months
following the sudden death of my second daughter, Zoe. The film was
a collaboration with Zoe's mother, Camille Hildebrandt who also appears
in the story as a wandering nomad. A few years after its Seattle premiere,
I took the movie out of circulation as it felt too personal to keep sharing.
But after recently watching it (25 years later), I felt that time had healed
something in me. Though this online version suffers a bit from occasional
uneven image quality, I'm surprised at how well it actually holds up.
- Antero, 3/10/2021

The VideoPoems (since 1992)

"Fears", Rainer Maria Rilke (click image for video)

"Set to poetic texts, often to excellent music by his long time collaborator
Sylvi Alli, these films show Alli’s command of film editing and visual language,
and his ability to draw performances of deeply grounded power from dancers
and actors, to create visions which are indeed loaded with the ability to evoke
deep longings, exaltations, cultural memories, and altered spiritual states."
- David Finkelstein for filmthreat.com (4 stars) 



Rilke's Dream #1 - Rainer Maria Rilke and "A Poison Tree" - William Blake

---> The VideoPoems viewing links
LIVING WITH A SORCERESS (4:05; 2020) text, Antero Alli
MOUVEMENT (4:00; 2001) text, Arthur Rimbaud
FAIRY (4:00; 2000) text, Arthur Rimbaud
FEARS (8:30; 2001) text, Rainer Maria Rilke
REQUIEM FOR A FRIEND (19:36; 2005) text, Rainer Maria Rilke
RILKE'S DREAM #1 (3:00 2005) Rainer Maria Rilke
RILKE'S DREAM #2 (4:00; 2005) Rainer Maria Rilke
WITCH BURNING (4:00; 1994) text, Sylvia Plath
BOOK OF QUESTIONS (6:00; 1993) text, Pablo Neruda
BOMBS & PRAYERS (6: 00; 1993/96) text, Rob Brezsny
THE ANGEL (4 min. 2018) text, William Blake
A POISON TREE (3:41; 2018); text, William Blake
BLACK SEA (4:00; 1992); text, Antero Alli

"A WIDER LIGHT" (2019) bird&wolf music video

---> bird&wolf Music Videos viewing links
Sylvi Alli, vocals, accordian & lyrics; Antero Alli, guitar & video

These "music videos" betray the commercial agendas of traditional
music videos with their slick overly-produced, multiple fast cuts of
the featured singer, musician or band. By deconstructing the genre,
I am free to follow the creative impulse. The music and songs in these
videos are by individuals and bands I personally know who granted
permission to interpret their music in this way. - Antero



"UNDER" (2018) Sylvi Alli and ParaTheatrical ReSearch

---> Other Music Video viewing links
Science of Deduction, Michelle Bellerose, Sylvi Alli

"LILY IN LIMBO" (1996-2001)

Since 1992, I've been creating short videos that don't really fall into any existing
categories besides maybe 'experimental.' The viewing link below goes to
sixteen videos (titles listed below link) posted online with descriptions on
how each one was developed as a specific experiment. - Antero

"COLD FORCE" (1993) and JIZO GARDEN/DIAMOND SUTRA (2020; 2:42)

CONTACT
verticalsource@gmail.com

ANTERO ALLI  has been writing and directing feature art films since 1993. His idiosyncratic movies are often influenced by his deep background in experimental theatre. They have all been been extensively reviewed at filmthreat.com and screened along the west coast arthouse circuit. In 2015, he took a five year hiatus from filmmaking to direct and produce five intermedia performance rituals while recording music and making music videos with his wife, Sylvi in Portland Oregon where they currently reside. Antero returned to cinema with "The Vanishing Field" (2020; 72 min.) and a year later, "The Alchemy of Sulphur" (2021; 109 min).


Cinephile Confessions in the Time of Covid
Trajectory from 2003 to present day 2021

 

"A Cinema of Otherness"
Subverting Mainstream Values & Standards

VISION STATEMENT and VIDEO/FILMOGRAPHY
"Why I Make Movies" -- list of titles , clips, stills, reviews

DVD Distribution
The Original Falcon Press

Vertical Pool Site Map