Raised in New York on a steady diet of Westerns and Disney True-Life Adventures, Nathaniel Dorsky started shooting 8mm movies at the age of eleven. In 1963, when he had just turned 20, he made Ingreen, a boldly symbolic psychodrama about a young man’s sexual coming of age. At that film’s premiere, he met soon-to-be fellow filmmaker Jerome Hiler, who would become his partner in life and a major inspiration for his work. (“We were filming for one another,” Hiler recently said.) In 1971 the two moved to San Francisco, where they’ve lived ever since. Around the same time, Dorsky entered a decade-long creative silence. He returned in 1982 with Hours for Jerome, a 55-minute feature compiled from footage shot between 1966 and 1970. Like all of Dorsky’s subsequent work, it’s a kind of cinematic lyric poem, entirely silent and rooted in a centuries-old tradition of devotional art (in this case, medieval illuminated manuscripts and prayer books).
The rest of the Eighties found Dorsky experimenting with new forms and materials: 1987’s Alaya was made up entirely of footage of shifting sand, and 1983’s Ariel, which had a rare public screening at this year’s New York Film Festival, is a beautiful hand-processed film full of thin, tremulous vertical lines and see-sawing horizontals. It was with 1996’s Triste—edited from over 20 years’ worth of footage—that Dorsky, as he once put it, fully arrived at “the level of cinema language that I have been working towards.” Since then, he’s made 16 luminous, description-defying short films, each with their own distinct tones and shadings. In films like Compline (09), August and After (12), and his two most recent titles, Spring and Song, Dorsky creates what he’s often called a “floating world,” in which street scenes, household interiors, meadows, rivers and forests are transformed into playgrounds for light, color and shadow. In a field often dominated by frenetic cutting and/or prolonged stasis, Dorsky’s films unfurl gradually but steadily in a kind of hushed suspension. They’re often attempts to do with light and texture what, in his book Devotional Cinema, Dorsky praised Mozart for having done in key changes and melodic lines: to “wed [a] style to the human metabolism in every detail"
by Max Nelson
CARACOLE (FOR IZCALI)
2023 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 17' 30 / 74 € distribution: 16mm |
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O DEATH
2023 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 5' 05 / 38 € distribution: 16mm |
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PAVANE
2023 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 11' 30 / 50 € distribution: 16mm |
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PLACE D'OR
2023 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 10' 00 / 44 € distribution: 16mm |
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CARACOLE (FOR MAC)
2022 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 7' 00 / 42 € distribution: 16mm |
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DIALOGUES
2022 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 17' 30 / 74 € distribution: 16mm |
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NAOS
2022 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 12' 30 / 55 € distribution: 16mm |
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EMBER DAYS
2021 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 10' 30 / 47 € distribution: 16mm |
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INTERVAL
2021 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 12' 30 / 55 € distribution: 16mm |
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TERCE
2021 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 12' 00 / 52 € distribution: 16mm |
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EMANATIONS
2020 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 16' 00 / 79 € distribution: 16mm |
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LAMENTATIONS
2020 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 14' 00 / 60 € distribution: 16mm |
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TEMPLE SLEEP
2020 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 18' 30 / 78 € distribution: 16mm |
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WILLIAM
2020 / b&w / silent / single screen / 12' 30 / 55 € distribution: 16mm |
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APRICITY
2019 / color / silent / single screen / 22' 00 / 94 € distribution: 16mm |
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CANTICLES
2019 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 15' 30 / 66 € distribution: 16mm |
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CARACOLE (FOR CECILIA)
2019 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 4' 00 / 32 € distribution: 16mm |
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INTERLUDE
2019 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 11' 00 / 48 € distribution: 16mm |
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CALYX
2018 / color / silent / single screen / 13' 00 / 56 € distribution: 16mm |
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COLOPHON - (for the Arboretum Cycle)
2018 / color / silent / single screen / 13' 05 / 56 € distribution: 16mm |
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ARBORETUM CYCLE
2017 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 137' 00 / 598 € distribution: 16mm |
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AUTUMN
2016 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 26' 00 / 109 € distribution: 16mm |
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THE DREAMER
2016 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 19' 00 / 84 € distribution: 16mm |
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INTIMATIONS
2015 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 18' 00 / 76 € distribution: 16mm |
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PRELUDE
2015 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 20' 00 / 84 € distribution: 16mm |
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AVRAHAM
2014 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 20' 00 / 84 € distribution: 16mm |
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DECEMBER
2014 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 14' 50 / 63 € distribution: 16mm |
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FEBRUARY
2014 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 16' 50 / 74 € distribution: 16mm |
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SONG
2013 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 18' 30 / 80 € distribution: 16mm |
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SPRING
2013 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 23' 00 / 97 € distribution: 16mm |
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SUMMER
2013 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 22' 50 / 97 € distribution: 16mm |
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APRIL
2012 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 26' 00 / 109 € distribution: 16mm |
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AUGUST AND AFTER
2012 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 18' 30 / 80 € distribution: 16mm |
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THE RETURN
2011 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 27' 00 / 113 € distribution: 16mm |
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AUBADE
2010 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 11' 30 / 50 € distribution: 16mm |
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PASTOURELLE
2010 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 16' 50 / 74 € distribution: 16mm |
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COMPLINE
2009 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 18' 30 / 80 € distribution: 16mm |
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SARABANDE
2008 / color / silent / single screen / 15' 00 / 63 € distribution: 16mm |
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WINTER
2007 / color / silent / single screen / 18' 50 / 80 € distribution: 16mm |
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SONG AND SOLITUDE
2005-2006 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 21' 00 / 88 € distribution: 16mm |
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THRENODY
2003-2004 / color / silent / single screen / 20' 00 / 84 € distribution: 16mm |
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THE VISITATION
2002 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 18' 00 / 76 € distribution: 16mm |
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LOVE'S REFRAIN
2000-2001 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 22' 30 / 97 € distribution: 16mm |
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ARBOR VITAE
1999-2000 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 28' 00 / 118 € distribution: 16mm |
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VARIATIONS
1992-1998 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 24' 00 / 101 € distribution: 16mm |
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TRISTE
1978-1996 / color / silent / single screen / 18' 30 / 80 € distribution: 16mm |
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17 REASONS WHY
1985-1987 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 20' 00 / 84 € distribution: 16mm |
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ALAYA
1976-1987 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 28' 00 / 118 € distribution: 16mm |
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PNEUMA
1977-1983 / color / silent / single screen / 27' 00 / 113 € distribution: 16mm |
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HOURS FOR JEROME - Part I
1966-1982 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 21' 00 / 88 € distribution: 16mm |
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HOURS FOR JEROME - Part II
1966-1982 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 24' 00 / 101 € distribution: 16mm |