Nathaniel Dorsky

Raised in New York on a steady diet of Westerns and Disney TrueLife Adventures Nathaniel Dorsky born 1943 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 mans sexual coming of age At that films premiere he met soontobe 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 theyve lived ever since Around the same time Dorsky entered a decadelong creative silence He returned in 1982 with Hours for Jerome a 55minute feature compiled from footage shot between 1966 and 1970 Like all of Dorskys subsequent work its a kind of cinematic lyric poem entirely silent and rooted in a centuriesold 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 1987s Alaya was made up entirely of footage of shifting sand and 1983s Ariel which had a rare public screening at this years New York Film Festival is a beautiful handprocessed film full of thin tremulous vertical lines and seesawing horizontals It was with 1996s Tristeedited from over 20 years worth of footagethat Dorsky as he once put it fully arrived at the level of cinema language that I have been working towards Since then hes made 16 luminous descriptiondefying 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 hes 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 andor prolonged stasis Dorskys films unfurl gradually but steadily in a kind of hushed suspension Theyre 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