#nathanieldorsky

[nathanieldorsky]

The Brooklyn Rail front page features stills from the films of Jerome Hiler and Nathaniel Dorsky

Cover of the May 3rd, 2024 edition of The Brooklyn Rail.  Stills from Jerome’s Words of Mercury and Nathaniel’s Triste

[digitaldenial]

Once upon a time I struck up a conversation in an airport with this friendly looking dude who was loading up his bolex camera. We nerded out about cameras, and he mentioned he was headed to a film festival where he had work being screened. Only later when googled him did I realize he’s a famous experimental filmmaker whose career spans decades! Nathaniel Dorsky. Look him up.

[fieldarts]

Interview with NATHANIEL DORSKY (I)

Nathaniel Dorsky, born in New York City in 1943, is an experimental filmmaker and film editor who has been making films since 1963. He has resided in San Francisco since 1971.

Dorsky was a visiting instructor at Princeton University in 2008 and he has been the recipient of many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship 1997 and grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, two from the Rockefeller Foundation, and one from the LEF Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the California Arts Council. He has presented films at the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Modern, the Filmoteca Española, Madrid, the Prague Film Archive, the Vienna Film Museum, the Pacific Film Archive, the Harvard Film Archive, Princeton University, Yale University, and frequently exhibits new work at the New York Film Festival's Views from the Avant-Garde and the Wavelengths program of the Toronto International Film Festival. In spring 2012 Dorsky took actively part in the three-month exposition of Whitney Biennial.[1] And in October 2015, the New York Film Festival honored his work with a thirty four film complete retrospective at Lincoln Center. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times listed this retrospective in second place in her list of the top ten films of 2015.[2]

In his book Devotional Cinema (2003), Dorsky writes of the long-standing link between art and health as well as the transformative potential of watching film. He also writes of the limitations of film when its vision is subservient to a theme or representative of language description, which can describe a world but does not actually see it.

Dorsky's films are available only as 16mm film prints and are distributed by Canyon Cinema in San Francisco and Light Cone in Paris. Prints of stills from his films are available at the Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, and the Peter Blum Gallery, New York City.

"The major part of my work is both silent and paced to be projected at silent speed (18 frames per second). Silence in cinema is undoubtedly an acquired taste, but the delicacy and intimacy it reveals has many rich rewards. In film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting them. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, curiosity, the sense of stepping into the world, sudden murky disruptions and undercurrents, expansion, pulling back, contraction, relaxation, sublime revelation. In my work, the screen is transformed into a "speaking character", and the images function as pure energy rather than acting as secondary symbol or as a source for information or storytelling. I put shots together to create a revelation of wisdom through delicate surprise. The montage does not lead to verbal understanding, but is actual and present. The narrative is that which takes place between the viewer and the screen. Silence allows these delicate articulations of vision which are simultaneously poetic and sculptural to be fully experienced." - Nathaniel Dorsky [3]

“The films of Nathaniel Dorsky blend a beauteous celebration of the sensual world with a deep sense of introspection and solitude. They are occasions for reflection and meditation, on light, landscape, time and the motions of consciousness. Their luminous photography emphasizes the elemental frisson between solidity and luminosity, between spirit and matter, while his uniquely developed montage permits a fluid and flowing experience of time. Dorsky's films reveal the mystery behind everyday existence, providing intimations of eternity." - Steve Polta, San Francisco Cinematheque. [4]

According to critic and historian Richard Suchenski, in Dorsky's films objects are “decontextualized and sometimes unmoored from their surroundings, allowing connections to develop which resonate not only between shots but also across the films as a whole, encouraging more active forms of awareness.

[anthologyfilmarchives]

We are thrilled to host Nathaniel Dorsky Oct 16 & 17 for NYC premieres of four brand-new films. Dorsky is one of the modern masters of the art of 16mm filmmaking, whose command of photochemical photography and editing is unsurpassed. ⠀ ⠀ Typically exquisite and achingly beautiful, this new quartet finds Dorsky subtly but perceptibly recalibrating his approach, with a recurring exploration of planes of focus and an intricate structure of theme and variation between individual chapters that gives the films a quality markedly distinct from his earlier work. ⠀ ⠀ Dorsky will be here in person to present both screenings of the quartet! #16mm #nathanieldorsky

[millenniumfilmjnl]

Millennium Film Journal No. 38 "Winds from the East" (2002). A few mint copies available. . . . #mfjbackissue #andywarhol #jonasmekas #takahikoiimura #nathanieldorsky #stuartsherman #davidjames #paularthur #callieangell #experimentalfilm #avantgardecinema #artistsmovingimage

[submarine-notes]

“A nivel visceral,la cualidad intermitente de la película está cerca de la forma en que experimentamos el mundo. No experimentamos un continuo sólido de existencia. A veces estamos aquí y a veces no, suspendidos en una cierta forma de ilusión ametralladora. Después de todo, ¿Algunos de nosotros sabe quién es realmente? Aunque asumimos que somos algo sólido, en realidad sólo experimentamos y maniobramos a través de nuestra existencia. Después de todo, ¿Puede algo ser realmente sólido?”

“... para que la película sea verdadera debe confiar en su intermitencia. Su montaje tiene que presentar una sucesión de eventos visuales que sean suficientemente incompletos y al mismo tiempo poderosos como para permitir que el sentido más básico de la existencia del espectador, rellene los huecos.”

“ Primero, el corte debe funcionar visualmente, luego la conectividad poética debe resonar y, finalmente, debe haber cierto sentido significativo o inevitable”

[rstarrobinett]

"In film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting them. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, curiosity, the sense of stepping into the world, sudden murky disruptions and undercurrents, expansion, pulling back, contraction, relaxation, sublime revelation. In my work, the screen is transformed into a ‘speaking character’, and the images function as pure energy rather than acting as secondary symbol or as a source for information or storytelling. I put shots together to create a revelation of wisdom through delicate surprise. The montage does not lead to verbal understanding, but is actual and present. The narrative is that which takes place between the viewer and the screen. Silence allows these delicate articulations of vision which are simultaneously poetic and sculptural to be fully experienced." - #NathanielDorsky - Seeing this new work yesterday was a elating and reassuring. The films are a mind-bath of organic, synthestetic beauty. And such a stark contrast with what we all then watched last night. Let us be good, please. (at New York Film Festival)

[merzbow-derek]

FORTUNE:

"Fortune" is a silent film directed by musician Naomi Yang (formerly of Galaxie 500), with original soundtrack by her band Damon & Naomi.

THE STORY: NORMAN’s father was a society portrait painter. After his father’s death, Norman faces the burden of inheriting his father’s life’s work. He struggles with conflicting feelings about a man who was a gifted artist, but a difficult and unsupportive father. In this emotional journey Norman reconnects with his own artistic nature, something that had not been possible while his father was alive -- finally emerging from his father’s shadow, and the shadow of his grief.

ABOUT FORTUNE: “Fortune” was entirely lighted and shot by Naomi Yang on DSLR. The edit is a collaboration between Naomi Yang and acclaimed experimental filmmaker and editor Nathaniel Dorsky. Damon & Naomi and their previous band Galaxie 500's music has been used as soundtrack in films including “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” and “Greenberg”; and on TV shows including “The Sopranos,” and “The Ghost Whisperer.”

“It feels like Damon & Naomi have always been around to soundtrack the inner lives of melancholy dreamers smart enough to seek them out.” (All Music Guide review for Damon & Naomi’s most recent album “False Beats and True Hearts,” 2011)

CAST: Norman von Holtzendorff Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez Naomi Yang

CREDITS: photographed & edited by Naomi Yang consulting editor Nathaniel Dorsky music by Damon & Naomi

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: The idea of a silent movie for which we would then write a soundtrack came to me in Turin, Italy, December 2011. Damon and I were on tour behind our most recent album, and arrived in town to perform at a venue called “Blah Blah” -- which from its name sounded like it had a 100% rock pedigree, but which turned out in fact to be the oldest movie theater in Turin. The room was a haunted gem, with a tiny projection booth accessible only from a narrow anonymous door under the arcades on the main street in town. The venue asked if we wanted to show a film or a DVD behind our musical performance; we were sorry not to take advantage of this opportunity. But there happened to be a used book and DVD stall just outside the venue, so we went looking for a film that we could perhaps use during the show and found a copy of Paul Leni’s 1924 “Waxworks.” We decided to take a chance and had the venue screen it behind our show, sight unseen.

The combination turned out to work so well, that we continued to play in front of this film throughout the rest of our Italian tour. It also inspired me to film my own “silent movie,” for which we could deliberately write the music.

I enlisted the help of my old friend Norman von Holtzendorff, who has a similar love of silent movies as well as a melodramatic flair. In addition to a common aesthetic, we shared the fact that each of us had lost our fathers in the past year, and both of our fathers had been artists who left us with the enormous responsibility for taking care of their life’s work. Norman and I each now had a storage space filled with our respective father’s work, and we were both trying to cope with the responsibility. And similarly, while each of us deeply admired our fathers’ artistic work, we had also both struggled throughout our adult lives with the aftermath of their flawed parenting.

We set out to in some way record this duality. I used my father’s old tripod and the lenses he had left me, filming Norman surrounding himself with his father’s image and paintings and exploring his own gender identity, which had been a source of friction between himself and his father. We worked together over the course of a year -- screening the footage in between shoots, planning the next determined by the footage that we had created.

What started as a lark -- “Hey Norman, I am making a silent film, do you want to be my Theda Bara?” -- became a transformative experience for both of us. I think it allowed us each to gain distance on our fathers and their work -- to make use of what we had learned from them, but focus on what we hoped to achieve for ourselves and our own work.

[juangabrielgutierrez]

El Cine de la Devoción #devotionalcinema #nathanieldorsky

[nathanieldorsky]

Jerome and Nathaniel will be celebrated at MoMA and Anthology Film Archives this month of May.

This ten program mini retrospective is to celebrate the publishing in English of a new book on the early years of their filmmaking titled Illuminated Hours, The Early Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler.

There will be seven hosted in person programs in New York at MoMA followed by three in person shows at Anthology Film Archives. This selection of films will open with Jerome Hiler’s slide lecture, Cinema Before 1300. The emphasis will both be on the early formative explorations and a selection of their later work from the last six years or so. Many new films will be screening in NY for the first time.

The series is online here; MoMA and Anthology Film Archives will be finalizing their screening schedules and updating their calendar pages. 

Nathaniel on the left, 1944, with his grandfather in the Bronx Botanical Gardens. Jerome on the right with his godfather, 1944, Jamaica, Queens

MoMA calendar link Anthology Film Archives link

Illuminated Hours: The Early Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, by Francisco Algarín Navarro & Carlos Saldaña. English edition managed and edited by Nick Hoff. ISBN: 978-8-4940-9766-9

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[nathanieldorsky]

Nathaniel's Caracole (for Mac) to premiere on March 16 at the Museum of the Moving Image

Caracole (for Mac) is part of the First Look film festival at the Museum of the Moving Image on Saturday, March 16th at 3:00 p.m. in New York City. This group show is the avant-garde showcase within the festival and will take place in the Redstone Theater beginning at 3 pm, titled, Illuminations: Elsewhere/Here.

Caracole (for Mac)

Nathaniel Dorsky  |  2022  |  7 minutes  |  silent speed  |  18fps  |  16 mm  | color  |  silent 

Mac McGinnes, a dear friend and neighbor, often sat in with me during my editing sessions. This brief but light-filled farewell was made for Mac upon his passing.  N.D.

[abalone-lover]

From nathanieldorsky "About" :

Nathaniel Dorsky, born in New York City in 1943, is an experimental filmmaker and film editor who has been making films since 1963. He has resided in San Francisco since 1971.

“In film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting human beings. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, relaxation, the sense of stepping into the world and pulling back, expansion, contraction, changing, softening, tenderness of heart. The first is a form of theater and the latter is a form of poetry.” - Nathaniel Dorsky

In his book Devotional Cinema (2003), Dorsky writes of the long-standing link between art and health as well as the transformative potential of watching film. He also writes of the limitations of film when its vision is subservient to an idea or representative of language description, which can describe a world but does not actually see it.

Variations: Six Film Stills

Variations Nathaniel Dorsky  |  1998  |  24 minutes  |  silent speed  |  18 fps  |  16 mm  |  color  |  silent

Variations blossomed forth while shooting additional material for Triste. What tender chaos, what current of luminous rhymes might cinema reveal unbridled from the daytime word? During the Bronze Age a variety of sanctuaries were built for curative purposes. One of the principal activities was transformative sleep. This montage speaks to that tradition. N. D.

Distribution  Canyon Cinema Distribution  Light Cone

[nathanieldorsky]

Screen Slate: Recent Works by Nathaniel Dorsky

Article on screenslate by Maxwell Paparella about the film show at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where six of Nathaniel Dorsky’s newest films were presented by Mark McElhatten.

Recent Works by Nathaniel Dorsky

"Excuse all of my titles," Nathaniel Dorsky says in a prerecorded video introduction, the many charms of which send the audience already elated into a program of six recent 16mm films—Canticles (2019), Lamentations (2020), Temple Sleep (2020), Emanations (2020), Ember Days (2021), and Terce (2021)—spanning these years of the pandemic and shown in the order of their making. Any writing about Dorsky’s work should serve only as recommendation to the uninitiated, with the caveat that (as Mark McElhatten writes in the précis to his MoMA "Carte Blanche" series, of which these screenings are a part) this program is "an experience that can't be summarized made up of films that can't be told."

continue reading on    screenslate

[nathanieldorsky]

Emanations:  Film Still

Emanations

Nathaniel Dorsky  I  2020  I  16 minutes  I  silent speed  I  18fps  I 16mm  I color l  silent

Emanations is the fourth film made during the Covid crises… in this case October and November reveal small joys in a melancholic sea.  N.D.

[nathanieldorsky]

Ember Days: Film Still

Ember Days

Nathaniel Dorsky  I  2021 I  10.5 minutes  I  silent speed  I  18fps  I 16mm  I color l  silent

Ember Days is the fifth film made during the Covid crises… primordial spring is in the air, all is tentative  N.D.

[millenniumfilmjnl]

Millennium Film Journal No. 35/36 "The Millennium" (2000). Cover design: #Howard Guttenplan. Includes the infamous "Millennium Survey." A few mint issues still available at mfj-online.org. Check out our new initiative at millenniumfilmjournal.com . . . #mfjbackissue #artistsmovingimage #avantgardecinema #experimentalfilm #millenniumfilmjournal #paularthur #noelcarroll #yvonnerainer #nathanieldorsky #grahameweinbren #michaelcentury #philsolomon #kurtkren