ABOUT
WILL IT PLAY IN PEORIA?
Established in 2018, Mourning Dove Films is located in the small city of Peoria—a historic part of Central Illinois that once was an entertainment Mecca in the days of vaudeville and theater palaces. Rich with a burgeoning independent filmmaking community, Peoria has potential to become prominent as a fertile location for great art and entertainment remote from the autocratic mainstream film industry.
STRIVING TO MAKE FILMS THAT ENDURE
INHERITING CINEMA’S TRADITIONS
Mourning Dove Films is a monument to cinema’s origins—an era of braver filmmaking where movies were made with a courage now lost. We believe there is an ethic to crafting motion pictures intrinsic to creating works of true beauty. Our conviction is that images must be earned and stronger cinema is a result of utilizing the original celluloid film format, as its accompanying traditions demand filmmakers to operate at their utmost.
FILMMAKING WITHOUT “FAME AND FORTUNE”
Repudiating itself from the depraved Hollywood infrastructure, it is an objective of Mourning Dove Films not to adulterate cinema with the modish radicalism and provincialism pervading most of the industry today. The synonymity made between cinema and Hollywood must be corrected—one is an art form, the other a corrupt oligarchy desecrating it.
FILMMAKING WITHOUT “FAME AND FORTUNE”
Repudiating itself from the depraved Hollywood infrastructure, it is an objective of Mourning Dove Films not to adulterate cinema with the modish radicalism and provincialism pervading most of the industry today. The synonymity made between cinema and Hollywood must be corrected—one is an art form, the other a corrupt oligarchy desecrating it.
HONORING TIME ITSELF
Time is “captured” or “taken” in the art of filmmaking; a moment is memorialized for all the world to experience. We now wield the technology to instantly record the reality before us via digital video. This immediacy has left us remiss in our relationship to time in an era of excessive images. Mourning Dove Films embraces the filmmaking traditions that deter the common indolence of contemporary cinema and considers an instant before making it permanent.
STORIES ARE MORE THAN ENTERTAINMENT
STORIES ARE MORE THAN ENTERTAINMENT
ABOUT WILLIAM JACOBS
William Jacobs is the founder and filmmaker behind Mourning Dove Films. He is an Arts alumnus of Illinois Central College and a graduate of The Second City’s Improv Program in Chicago.
William grew up making films. His history with cinema began at the age of seven creating stop-motion animations with toy figurines. After having made dozens of short films in the span of fifteen years, William turned to the tradition of cinema using the 16mm film format with great interest in the asceticism of celluloid filmmaking. He is currently embarking upon the creation of his debut feature film, Poet in a Modern World, which follows two artists wandering through modernity’s spiritual desert.
His depth of experience in the domain of independent filmmaking has taught him the advantage of working with limited resources and small crews outside the clutches of Hollywood. William’s preoccupation with the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Carl T. Dreyer, among other filmmakers, has led him to exploring the art form’s distinct, mysterious qualities.
CONNECT WITH WILLIAM
“My aim is to place cinema among the other art forms. To put it on a par with music, poetry, prose, etc.’’
—Andrei Tarkovsky, Time Within Time
