Nathaniel Dorsky

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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".

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  • wc Gender: Male
  • calendar_month Birth Date: 1943-01-01
  • event Death Date Unknown
  • school Known for: Directing
  • star Popularity: 0.9
  • info Birth Place New York City, New York, USA
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image Images

smart_display Movies and TV shows by Nathaniel Dorsky

movie_edit Directing

5

Ember Days

2021-05-31

5

Look Park

1974-11-01

5

Terce

2021-02-01

5

Arboretum Cycle

2018-02-05

5

Song and Solitude

2006-09-11

5

The Return

2011-09-12

5

Hours for Jerome

1982-12-05

5

August and After

2012-04-16

5

April

2012-01-01

5

Song

2013-05-02

5

Spring

2013-09-09

5

Naos

2022-07-26

5

Caracole (for Cecilia)

2019-10-14

5

Sarabande

2008-09-05

5

Compline

2009-10-10

5

Aubade

2010-04-12

5

Winter

2008-01-01

5

Summer

2013-12-01

5

December

2014-04-03

5

Avraham

2014-10-27

5

February

2014-01-01

5

Revenge of the Cheerleaders

1976-05-01

5

Arbor Vitae

2000-10-07

5

Interval

2022-02-06

5

Revenge of the Cheerleaders

1976-05-01

5

Caracole (for Izcali)

2023-05-29

5

Threnody

2004-12-31

5

The Visitation

2002-12-31

5

Ingreen

1964-08-20

5

A Fall Trip Home

1965-05-04

5

Summerwind

1966-02-04

5

Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 1)

2006-01-01

5

Love's Refrain

2001-09-09

5

Intimations

2015-09-29

5

Prelude

2015-09-29

5

O Death

2023-11-28

5

Triste

1996-12-05

5

Triste

1996-12-05

5

August and After

2012-04-16

5

August and After

2012-04-16

5

August and After

2012-04-16

5

Library

1970-01-01

5

Wayfinders: A Pacific Odyssey

1999-05-06

5

Autumn

2015-10-20

5

The Dreamer

2016-10-03

5

Variations

1998-10-10

5

Place d'or

2023-06-20

5

Dialogues

2022-10-14

5

Alaya

1987-12-07

5

17 Reasons Why

1987-12-07

5

Pastourelle

2010-09-12

5

Pneuma

1983-06-06

5

Ariel

1983-05-23

5

Music Makes a City: A Louisville Orchestra Story

2010-09-17

5

Elohim

2017-10-15

5

Caracole (for Mac)

2022-05-03

5

Pavane

2023-03-20

5

Abaton

2017-10-15

5

Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America

2004-08-19

5

Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles

2000-06-16

5

Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles

2000-06-16

5

What Happened to Kerouac?

1986-04-16

5

What Happened to Kerouac?

1986-04-16

5

Coda

2017-10-15

5

Ode

2017-10-15

5

Caracole (for Izcali)

2023-05-29

5

Caracole (for Izcali)

2023-05-29

5

O Death

2023-11-28

5

O Death

2023-11-28

5

September

2018-02-05

5

Monody

2018-02-05

5

Epilogue

2018-02-05

5

Fortune

2014-10-02

5

Revenge of the Cheerleaders

1976-05-01

5

Revenge of the Cheerleaders

1976-05-01

5

Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle)

2018-07-31

5

Calyx

2018-12-01

5

Interlude

2019-10-11

5

Apricity

2019-10-12

5

Lux Perpetua II

2016-01-01

5

Ossuary

2016-01-01

5

Lamentations

2020-04-17

5

Renga

1989-01-01

5

Temple Sleep

2020-08-20

5

Lux Perpetua I

2016-01-01

5

Death of a Poet

2016-01-01

5

Other Archer

2016-01-01

5

Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 2)

2006-01-01

5

Canticles

2019-12-11

5

William

2020-09-17

5

Kodachrome Carl Rakosi in Golden Gate Park

2013-04-04

5

Emanations

2020-11-26

5

Catch A Tiger

1963-01-01

5

Black Sheep Boy

1995-01-01

5

Fool’s Spring (Two Personal Gifts)

1967-01-01