I am a cinematographer

It was a special day at Nervous Films yesterday because the amazingly talented Pete Sillen came out to the barn with a station wagon filled with cameras & his teenage son! Pete is half the creative genius behind the film Benjamin Smoke (the other half being Jem Cohen who also made an appearance at the barn a few pre-blog months back) and the cinematographer for the hypnotically beautiful Old Joy. His new feature film, which I was lucky enough to see a rough cut of in his NY studio a little while ago, is titled I Am Secretly An Important Man. It is a documentary about the Seattle based poet Steven "Jesse" Bernstein who is a little known grunge pioneer that created a legacy of near myth surrounding his outsider life and work. Bernstein is a fascinating subject and the images in the film are pure Sillen magic, muted shots that somehow manage to be intimate and expansive at the same time. I can't wait to see how these beautiful filmakers saw our own film! Now to get Pete's footage developed (and Jem's too!) which is a new thing to our digital still camera world...