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 to interrupt whatever assumptions, expectations, and beliefs inhibit my freedom to discover new ways of seeing and staying open to the fertile void, source of all creation, and its hilarious offspring, the singing womb of the Poetic Imagination (more on my creative process and inspirations at bottom of this page). 

My media-making 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, well, it happened to me. Great losses sometimes come with great 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.

   
"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 (note: this was made four years before Seattle's WTO riots). I was soon compelled to explore a modern tragedy in TRAGOS (2000), a cyber-noir witch hunt tale about a fundamentalist Christian attourney who naively judges an urban tribe of technopagans as a 'satanic suicide cult' with dire 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 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 to write and direct UNDER A SHIPWRECKED MOON (2003), an ancestral love story where a Finnish-American family visits their hospitalized, comatose patriarch whose true love keeps appearing in his dreams. The deep internal conflicts ravaging some mothers who yearn to become artists, and some artists yearning to be mothers, came into sharp 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 an epic prose 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 anxious 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 sense of enchantment was restored in THE INVISIBLE FOREST (2008) where a theatre director (whom I portray) takes his troupe out into the forest to perform the magic theatre of French Surrealist Antonin Artaud. After a three-year filmmaking hiatus, I took on my most ambitious project to date:  TO DREAM OF FALLING UPWARDS (2011), a hilarious vengeance tale of an urban sex magickian who asks a Castaneda-styled desert witch to solve a vexing occult problem. 

"Flamingos" (2012)

After exploring the soft white underbelly of the occult underworld, I was itching to find a more personal, intimate story which I discovered in my outlaw romance noir, FLAMINGOS (2012), a dizzy cocktail chaser of crime, metaphysics, and amour fou. After that frolic, the muses sent me packing through the labyrinth of ancient mythologies where I discovered a contemporary drama of three women attempting to unearth the values of pre-Hellenic goddess worship in THE BOOK OF JANE (Nov. 2013).

"Dreambody/Earthbody" (2012)

Between productions, I recharge my batteries by doing next to nothing and by watching films by my favorite filmmakers. During these fallow phases, I also immerse myself in ParaTheatrical ReSearch projects that often times inspire ideas, themes, and visions for my movies. This work has also resulted in the production of four paratheatre video documents: ARCHAIC COMMUNITY (1992),  CRUX (1999), ORPHANS OF DELIRIUM (2004) and DREAMBODY/EARTHBODY (2012). Paratheatre principles, techniques, and lab reports are outlined in my comprehensive workbook, "Towards an Archeology of the Soul" (2003).

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

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 support of my wife, the multi-talented singer/composer/actress, Sylvi Alli (since 1990) and my impeccably skilled editor, Chris Odell (since 2000). 

 
"To Dream of Falling Upwards" (2011) 

So far, all my movies have been self-funded and/or co-produced with my peers. I don't see the point in applying and waiting for corporate grants or studio funding when I can start work right away. Not including the time it takes to raise funds, each movie typically takes six to twelve months from concept to final cut. After ten years of submitting my work to film festivals, I have chosen the more gratifying option of four-walling my movies at west coast arthouses and universities. These screenings gain promotional support by critical reviews at filmthreat.com, sittingnow.co.uk and mindjack.com. My movies are also available on dvd at this webpage and can be booked by event producers by clicking this.

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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