As Writer/Director:
Raps (coming soon)
Good Blood (coming soon)
Denmother (coming soon)
Comforter (2021)
Pillars (2020)
Some Beasts (2015)
Hozomeen (2013)
New Animal (2011)
In Kind (2011)
Rehoboth (2011)
As Producer:
The Interior (in production)
Jules of Light and Dark (2018)
Casa De Mi Madre (2017)
Parthenon (2017)
Her Wilderness (2014)
Cameron Bruce Nelson is a writer/director whose award-winning first feature, Some Beasts, was chosen to participate at the IFP Narrative Labs, the U.S. in Progress-Wroclaw, and received an Austin Film Society post-production grant. The film went on to screen at both national and international festivals and received a physical and streaming release via Turn Key Films. His most recent short films, Pillars and Comforter, World Premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2020 and 2021. Pillars won the jury award for Outstanding US Narrative Short at the DC Shorts festival and received praise from Film Threat, which called it “brief, quiet, and tightly composed, but brimming with passion and regret and loss.” Cameron is a graduate of Black Factory Cinema's workshop in Cuba, where he was mentored by Abbas Kiarostami. He holds an MFA in Screenwriting/Directing from Columbia University's School of the Arts, where he was awarded a Janowsky Screenwriting Fellowship, the Katharina Otto-Bernstein Grant, and the Lisa Rubin Award for Screenwriting. His producing credits include Frank Mosley's Her Wilderness and Daniel Laabs' Jules of Light and Dark, which won the Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Narrative Feature at LA Outfest and New York’s Newfest and was the recipient of a SFFILM/Kenneth Rainin Filmmaking Grant. Cameron was a Narrative Features Programmer for the 2021 edition of the Slamdance Film Festival and has served as a juror for the Slamdance Film Festival's Screenplay Competition for the 2021 and 2022 editions. At Columbia University, Cameron taught Non-Fiction Film and served as a Teaching Assistant for Professors Richard Peña and Ronald Gregg. Cameron is an alumni and mentor for The Gotham (formerly IFP) and serves on the Austin Film Society's Film Advisory Committee, where he mentors rising filmmakers. He currently serves as a lecturer in Screen at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.
Press:
Across [Pillars’] brief 10-minute running time, Nelson proves himself an accomplished visual storyteller, revealing essentially everything about these characters and their world through staging and performance. Nothing is overstated, yet the desires and misgivings of Sarah and Rebekah, as well as the traditionalism and piousness of their community, are conveyed remarkably by the filmmaker’s measured and concise arrangement of dialogue-free scenes.
—Nick Rocco Scalia, Film Threat
“An immense film whose ideas and images resonate long after it's been watched, Some Beasts announces Nelson as a significant, uncompromising new voice in American independent cinema, taking on national obsessions fearlessly and finding something new to say about a subject that has obsessed so many film-makers recently.”
—Graham Williamson, Vérité Film Magazine
"A masterpiece of organic imagery, passionate performances and deeply felt grace …Cameron Nelson has given us a thing a beauty, a pure form of the medium. There is not another film like this in the world, and no other voice like Nelson’s.”
—Rachel Gibson Shepherd, Truth on Cinema
“A must-see…Some Beasts reminds me of early David Gordon Green films… lost and deeply flawed characters living in a hole-in-the-wall location most of the world has forgotten about.”
—Chase Whale, Dallas Observer
"...Regional films with this sort of depth and artistry are a welcome addition to the canon of American independent cinema, and in a culture where everything is in danger of being co-opted, sorely needed."
—Michael McWay, Hammer to Nail
Awards & Accolades:
2020
2020 Katharina Otto-Bernstein Production Grant (Raps)
2020 Outstanding US Narrative Short, DC Shorts (Pillars)
2019
2019 Lisa Rubin Award for Best Pilot Screenplay (Powder River)
2019 Grand Jury Prize, Best Narrative Feature, Outfest (Jules of Light and Dark)
2019 Austin Film Society Travel Grant (Jules of Light and Dark)
2018
2018 Grand Jury Award, Narrative Feature, NewFest (Jules of Light and Dark)
2017
2017 IFP Narrative Labs, Official Selection (Jules of Light and Dark)
2017 U.S. In Progress, Paris, Official Selection (Jules of Light and Dark)
2014 - 2016
2016 Janowsky Fellowship in Screenwriting (Columbia University)
2016 IFP No Borders, Official Selection (Jules of Light and Dark)
2016 Jury Award, Sarasota Film Festival (Some Beasts)
2016 Hammer to Nail Short Film Contest, Winner (Casa de mi Madre)
2015 Jury Award, Dallas International Film Festival (Some Beasts)
2015 Jury Award, Knoxville Film Festival (Some Beasts)
2015 Best Narrative Feature, Virginia Film Festival (Some Beasts)
2015 Ron Tibbett Excellence in Filmmaking Award, IndieMemphis (Some Beasts)
2015 Austin film Society Production Grant (Jules of Light and Dark)
2014 IFP Narrative Labs, Official Selection (Some Beasts)
Contact Cameron:
cbnfilm[at]gmail[dot]com