Acclaimed Documentary THE ROYAL ROAD Out on DVD & VOD, Today

A cinematic essay set against a contemplative backdrop of 16mm urban California landscapes, THE ROYAL ROAD offers up intimate reflections on nostalgia, the pursuit of unavailable women, butch identity and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo alongside a primer on Junipero Serra's Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican American War. The film world premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and has won critical attention and awards at festivals throughout the world.

Deceptively simple landscapes serve as the FRAMEWORK for the film's lyrically written voiceover, which combines rigorous historical research with a stream-of consciousness personal monologue and relates these seemingly disparate stories from an intimate, colloquial perspective to tell a one-of-a-kind California tale. A fascinating and unlikely reinvention story, THE ROYAL ROAD simultaneously explores cinematic spiritual channeling, the conquest and colonization of Mexico and the American Southwest, fading historical Californian urban landscapes, and the passions found in butch identity to achieve an achingly beautiful and poetic defense of remembering. Probing roads from El Camino Real, to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, to the road right outside the front door, Olson crafts a deeply intelligent and transcending observation of the human condition that reaches for redemption in the embrace of history, nostalgia, mindfulness, and sheer beauty.

THE ROYAL ROAD is especially timely as one of Olson's topics of exploration is the legacy of Spanish missionary Junipero Serra (recently canonized by the Pope amidst much controversy and objections from Native American activists) - just one of the film's many fascinating strands of reflection.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/169559820