Rob Nilsson is an independent director based in San Francisco, renowned for his innovative and pioneering work in the field of digital filmmaking. He co-directed Northern Lights (1978) with John Hanson, which won the Camera d'Or at Cannes, and Heat and Sunlight (1987),which earned him the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, making him the first American film director to win both awards.
Nilsson is the creator of the Direct Action style of digital filmmaking, taught in the Tenderloin yGroup Actor's Ensemble, San Francisco, and featured in workshops around the world. He is also a pioneer in the techniques of video to film transfer, which led to the digital revolution.
Throughout his career, Nilsson has directed numerous feature films, including Signal 7 (1986),Chalk (1996),and the 9 @ Night film series, which received the San Francisco Film Critic's Circle Marlon Riggs Award for courage and innovation in cinema in 2008. Seven of the 9 @ Night films had their World Premieres at the Mill Valley International Film Festival.
In collaboration with studio Malaparte in Japan, Nilsson completed a Direct Action digital feature film shot on Sagi Island off the coast of Hiroshima, Winter Oranges, which premiered at the Fukuoka Film Archives in Fukuoka and the Mill Valley International Film Festival in 2000. He also shot another Direct Action digital feature, Samt, in Jordan, which premiered at the Mill Valley International Film Festival in 2004.
Nilsson has directed A Town Has Turned to Dust (1998),a feature film for the USA Channel, from a script by Rod Serling, and Presque Isle (2008),a narrative feature shot on locations in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Northern Wisconsin, which premiered at the Mill Valley FF in 2007. He directed screen legend Stacy Keach in Imbued (2009),which premiered at the Mill Valley International Film Festival.
In addition to his feature films, Nilsson has directed several documentaries, including What Happened here (2013),a road movie and personal essay on the life of Leon Trotsky.
Nilsson's film criticism has been featured on Ifilm and the Adobe Motion Channel, and he has written a regular editorial column in RES, a magazine on digital filmmaking. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Rockefeller Artist's Grant in 2002, and retrospectives of his work have taken place at various film festivals around the world.
Recent awards include the Ted M. Larson Award for "outstanding contributions to the film industry" from the Fargo International Film Festival, the Indie Pioneer Award from the Kansas City Filmmaker's Jubilee, a Filmmaker of the Year award from the Silver Lake Film Festival, Los Angeles, and the Sophia Lifetime Achievement Award from the Syracuse International Film Festival.
Nilsson is also an artist with an extensive body of work, and his book of poetry, From a Refugee of Tristan Da Cunha, was released in 2007. His book about the cinema, Wild Surmise, A Dissident View, was released in 2013.
