Camera Gun, an enigmatic portrait of Aukai Collins, a white kid from San Diego whose jailhouse conversion to Islam led to his training for holy war with the Taliban, combat in Chechnya, and an unwelcome return to the ghetto reality of home. A shocking and timely look into the matrix of violence, rebellion, and alienation in America.

"It is not only what the story in my film is about that interests me. It is what my film inspires that I am curious about. This confrontation cannot happen any other place than in a film I make. My film is an object formed by my imagination, based on realities that compelled me to point a camera at. But realities are simply a starting point. It is how they are looked at then composed and arranged that make a greater new reality.

When I see what is happening I am witnessing history. I must film this history in order to preserve a path that I am walking. My self imposed responsibility is to make an issue of that walk down that path, because I want people to remember it, but in an altered way.

I try to, as close as possible, to film the sensation (the emotion) of my first encounter with the person or the subject I filmed.

What is CAMERA GUN? It is an example of how I aimed and shot at the ?McDonalds generation?. It is an aim and shot at a moment in my time. It is how I pulled the trigger and bagged 1) a couple of people, 2) a few experiences, 3) an economic context, 4) a social class, 5) ramifications of a political happening and 6) an aesthetic. It is how I arranged these elements, placed myself into the arrangement and created a story where one did not exist before.

It is not what I am looking for that is important. It is what I discover that brings meaning. This is my revelation. But here lies the essence of the problem contemporary film makers confront. They are looking for a definition, defined before they pick up a camera. This leads to misunderstandings. How can you define a revelation before it takes place? You can define everything else: the process, your ideas and intentions but if what you discover is only what you expected, well how boring is that? How inconsequential. How a waste of time. How unchallenging. How uncreative. How unscientific. How un-Newtonian. How un-Darwinian. How not a revelation. I made CAMERA GUN (and FULL HOUSE IN MALALAI) because I was inspired to pick up a camera and shoot and only then look for financing. It always comes down to money. But that should never get in the way of ? "