BIOGRAPHY:An
early reader and avid TV junkie, Paul Anthony Nelson grew up as an
obsessive devotee of superhero comic books, in between trips to the
movies every school holiday and a childhood which took far too much
advantage of the early days of VHS players. But seeing 'Die Hard' on
VHS at the end of the 1980s set him on the path of devoting his life
to the movies, and he's never looked back.
Bored
one afternoon in 1990, he took his parents' new VHS-C camcorder and
made a ridiculous short all by himself - acting opposite a man made
of pillows with a football for a head - but didn't make another film
until the mid-late '90s, a trio of short films for the White Gloves
Film Festival, a precursor to Tropfest, where emerging filmmakers
made shoot-to-show one-reel films on Super 8mm & 16mm over a
weekend, only seeing the finished product on the big screen in front
of an audience a month later! Paul also co-directed the 2004 music
video 'Platinum Scissors' for Melbourne indie band Life Imitating
(later Bluestar), which was screened on ABC TV's iconic music video
program 'Rage' and Foxtel's Channel V.
Teaming
up with his partner, Perri Cummings, he made 2008's 'Interchange' -
an ensemble drama of AFL football fans - which won a prize at the
L.A. All Sports Film Festival in 2012, then directed the backstage
comedy short 'Why Must The Show Go On?' to a successful premiere at
the Australian Centre of the Moving Image the next year. After that,
Paul earned his Diploma in Screen & Media from RMIT, and he and
Perri formed the independent production company Cinema Viscera, with
the aim of creating fresh spins on beloved genre conventions for 21st
century audiences.
Cinema
Viscera's first decade yielded Paul's graduation short, 'Scope'
(2010) - a tale of a blind female sniper, shot in a 1970s
'grindhouse' style - the horror short 'T is for Talk Radio' (2011;
aka 'Talkback') - a "blunt force social commentary" about
media manipulation - made for Drafthouse Films' 'ABCs of Death' 26th
Director contest, the short thriller 'Cigarette' (2016) - a
"cautionary fable" about assumed consent - which premiered
at Melbourne's Monster Fest. The decade culminated in Paul and
Perri's first feature film, the modern comedy/Film Noir 'Trench'
(2018). Costing just $27,363, 'Trench' was the first-ever feature to
premiere at the Setting Sun Film Festival, screening in Melbourne's
historic Sun Theatre.
.Perri Cummings and Paul Anthony Nelson,
Cinema Viscera promo shot.
Cinema
Viscera's second feature, the modern Australian gothic
horror-thriller 'Apparitions', again made on a micro budget of just
$55,000, made its world premiere at Melbourne's Monster Fest in 2021
and was released in the US and UK by 4Digital Media.
After
making a couple of no-budget shorts ('Interchange' and 'Hungry') in
and around their homes for Cinema Viscera subscribers in 2020 and
2022, Paul and Perri co-directed the ambitious short film 'Three
Sisters', using Shakespeare's 'King Lear' as a springboard to an
immersive comic tragedy that will be submitted to festivals in 2024,
all the while working on features in various stages of development.
In
addition to filmmaking, Paul co-hosted the cult hit podcast Hell Is
For Hyphenates with Lee Zachariah from 2010-2015 and the 3RRR FM
Melbourne film review show Primal Screen (formerly Plato's Cave) from
2019-2021, has recorded a number of Blu-ray audio commentaries for
companies like Kino Lorber and Arrow, and since 2022 has worked in
acquisition and distribution for Bounty Films.
Paul shooting Apparitions (2021)
CRITICAL
OVERVIEW:
STATEMENT:
As
a filmmaker, I've always loved to throw very real, often seemingly
incapable, characters into heightened genre situations - or to
present a traditional genre framework and fill it with very relatable
human weaknesses and behaviour - and play with that tension.
Like one
of my great idols, George A. Romero, I also like to infuse my work
with a social consciousness, or weave a sociopolitical backdrop into
my films. But above all, I just like to have fun and show audiences a
good time, but to also give them something a little offbeat, to
perhaps see themselves in these little cinematic worlds.
I've wanted
to be a filmmaker since my teens, but only briefly messed around with
filmmaking until my late 30s, when I teamed up with my life partner
Perri Cummings to make movies, so we still feel like relative
newcomers to the form, and to be honest, we do still feel like we're
finding our voices, both individually and as a duo..
Paul Anthony Nelson, April 2024.
FILMOGRAPHY:
Trench (2018)
As
Director:
Untitled
Vampire Short (1990, short, 5 min, VHS, also
screenwriter, videographer)
Norwegian
Llamas Take a Summer Holiday in France 3 (1991,
short, 50 mins, VHS; co-directed
various sketches, with Matthew Wings and Ben Connell, also
co-screenwriter, co-videographer)
TheExtra-extraordinary (1993,
25 min, short, VHS; co-directed with Matthew Wings, also
co-screenwriter, co-videographer)
The
Ritualistic Dance of the Newly Single Man (1995,
short, 3 mins, Super 8mm, also screenwriter, producer,
cinematographer)
In
Broad Daylight (1999, short, 3 mins, Super 8mm, also
screenwriter, producer, cinematographer)
2:24 (2002,
short, 3 mins, Super 8mm, also screenwriter, producer,
cinematographer)
Life
Imitating - 'Platinum Scissors' (2005; music video, 4
mins, digital; co-directed with Matthew Wings, also co-screenwriter,
co-producer)
