I don't call myself an artist.  Best to let others, the world, decide what to call you. I see myself more as a kind of interruptor. I like interrupting assumptions, expectations, and preconceptions (my own and others') that inhibit perception. I want new ways of seeing. I want intimacy with the fertile void, source of all creation, and its hilarious offspring, the singing womb of the Poetic Imagination.  Welcome to my madness. I am a happy love slave to the Muses.

My films don't fit into any existing cinematic genre; they are marketting nightmares! If I were to create a genre, it might be called oneric docufictions. In my stories, the nocturnal dreams of my lead characters often guide ad shape their daytime fates. My films are also heavily veiled autobiographical documents of my inner and outer life starting with the tragic 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 unfathomable loss gifted me with vision, a gift that keeps on giving.  I woke up; 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" (2001) 

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. Five years later, I explored conflicting religious beliefs in TRAGOS (2001), a cyber-noir witch hunt tale about a fundamentalist Christian attourney who prosecutes the leader of an urban tribe of technopagans when he becomes  convinced they are a 'satanic suicide cult'. 

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

The racial profiling immediately following the 9/11 attacks outraged the making of HYSTERIA (2002; written with Jakob Bokulich), about a Croatian Catholic soldier who drinks datura tea and mistakes a powerful hallucination for a visitation from the Holy Virgin Mary. On my fiftieth birthday, I returned to my Finnish roots in UNDER A SHIPWRECKED MOON (2003), where a Finnish-American family visits their hospitalized, comatose patriarch whose true love beckons him to the great beyond in his dreams. Women I have known who stood at the crossroads between sacrificing their lives to Art or Motherhood inspired the making of THE GREATER CIRCULATION (2005), a poetic docufiction set in present-time Berkeley and in Paris, 1908 -- where poet Rainer Maria Rilke transforms his grief over the sudden death of his friend, artist Paula Modersohn-Becker, into his epic prose lament, "Requiem for a Friend". 

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

Fear-mongering politics triggered the making of my anxious X-mas comedy, THE MIND IS A LIAR AND A WHORE (2007), about a quirky Berkeley household climbing the slippery slopes between actual and perceived threats during an alleged bioterrorist attack in their city. I returned to my earliest theatrical influence, Antonin Artaud, to make THE INVISIBLE FOREST (2008) about an insomniac theatre director (whom I portray) conducting a group paratheatrical experiment in a forest when a series of disturbing dreams forces him to question his sanity. The suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of my friend and mentor, Christopher S. Hyatt, compelled the creation of  TO DREAM OF FALLING UPWARDS (2011), a zany occult thriller about an urban sex magickian who visits a Castaneda-style desert witch to help him solve a vexing esoteric dilemma. 

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"To Dream of Falling Upwards" (2011) and "Flamingos" (2012)

A need to work through my many unresolved relationships and liasons with women led to the making of FLAMINGOS (2012), an outlaw romance noir about twin sisters in love with a bank-robbing hypnotist junkie. My urban fable THE BOOK OF JANE (2013) developed from a vision of three generations of feminist women and the overlapping worlds of the nomadic homeless, sheltered academia, and pre-Hellenic goddess worship. My ongoing relationship with the imaginal realm of the Muses inspired OUT OF THE WOODS, a magical realist drama of a young man who survives a near-death experience with amnesia and a disturbing new psychic talent that forces a new identity.

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"The Book of Jane" (2013) and "Out of the Woods" (2015) 

Between productions, I participate in paratheatrical research, a group ritual process that sometimes inspires seed visions for future films. I started this paratheatrical work in 1977 -- inspired by Jerzy Grotowski's group experiments in the forests of Poland during the seventies (as told by Andre Gregory in the film, "My Dinner with Andre"). Between 1992 and 2017, I produced seven video documents of my paratheatrical research: ARCHAIC COMMUNITY (1992), CRUX (1999), ORPHANS OF DELIRIUM (2004),  DREAMBODY/EARTHBODY (2012), A TURBULENCE OF MUSES (2016), BARDOVILLE (2017), SOROR MYSTICA (2017) and FALLEN MONSTERS (2018). In 2003, my paratheatrical workbook "Towards an Archeology of the Soul" (Vertical Pool) was published.

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"Orphans of Delirium" (2004) and "Dreambody/Earthbody" (2012)

Between 1991 and 2001, I crafted about a dozen short works including LILY IN LIMBO (1996; with Sylvi Alli), ROADKILL, (2001) and more abstract "videopoems" using text by Rilke, Neruda, H.D., Rimbaud, Plath, Tzara, & others.  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 personal and artistic support of my wife, the multi-talented singer/composer/actress, Sylvi Alli (since 1990) and my skillful film editor, Chris Odell (2000-2015). 

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

So far, all my movies have been self-funded and/or co-produced with peers. I never saw the point in applying and waiting for corporate grants or studio funding when I can start working right away and maintain total creative control. Not including the time it takes to raise funds, each movie typically takes six to twelve months from concept to final cut. My public screenings gain promotional support by critical reviews at filmthreat.com, sittingnow.co.uk and various blogs. My movies are also available on dvd at this webpage and can be booked for screenings by event producers here.

After 22 years of almost constant film production, I completed my last feature fiction film, "Out of the Woods" in the summer of 2015 when it premiered in Portland Oregon. Two months later, Sylvi and I relocated to Portland to reinvent ourselves. I quit making films and started creating new works of experimental theatre along with developing my musical collaborations with Sylvi as bird&wolf. I continue booking screenings in Portland venues such as Clinton Street Theater and PerformanceWorks NW while creating short films for our theatrical projects.

truly,
ANTERO ALLI
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