Director
A bouquet from those final arid days of summer.
Director
Primordial spring is in the air, all is tentative.
Director
Terce is the sixth film made during the Covid crises… the yellow greens of spring at last… the beginning of a greater relaxation.
Director
Emanations is the fourth film made during the Covet crises… in this case October and November reveal small joys in a melancholic sea. N.D.
Director
William Brown, the son of my dear friend, Owsley Brown, is majoring in acting at the University of Southern California. During the lock down we ventured out three times together to Golden Gate Park to enjoy playing movies, so to speak. We decided on the loose framework of depicting a day on LSD, lost in a forest of noir-ish lighting, and inspired by our mutual love of Nicholas Musuraca and John Alton, two very great directors of both low budget and more mainstream cinematography. N.D.
Director
"Temple Sleep was photographed and edited during the initial Virus lockdown. The fly casting pools in Golden Gate Park became a mind healing place for me, a calming space of sacredness, tempered by the fear of the on-coming unknown. A place of feminine power" - N.D.
Director
"Lamentations is a cinematic tumble through diverse dreamscapes in a man-made world." —N.D.
Director
A strange autumnal in an empty world, a film of late autumn and ghostly presences.
Director
“The title Apricity refers to the warmth of the sun in winter. It is an homage to the writer Jane (Brakhage) Wodening. In speaking to her I mused, ‘perhaps your age is the winter and you are the warmth of the sun.’” –Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
“A brief lost moment lies between.” — Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
"Seven and a half weeks ago, I had open heart surgery...In the three weeks to go before the operation, I bought 21 rolls of film and said 'I'm going to shoot a roll of film every day until I go to the hospital.' ... This film is shot with the overall feeling for me, personally, that it's elegiac, it's like saying goodbye to the world."
Director
Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle) has three sections. It is in the spirit of the early Chinese landscape colophons, a text added to the horizontal scroll at a later date from when the landscape itself was enacted. Colophon was not made to be shown along with the Arboretum Cycle, but a new thing, a spring later, a different maker, so to speak. N.D.
Director
A cycle of seven movies filmed in San Francisco Arboretum during 2017. The chronological order of them goes as follows: Elohim, Abaton, Coda, Ode, September, Monody and Epilogue. A tribute to life in the form of pure light.
Director
Epilogue is the seventh film in the Arboretum Cycle, a descent into the dark damp earth, a period of dying.
Director
A monody is an ode sung by a single actor in a Greek tragedy, a poem lamenting a person’s death. In this case, the sixth section of the Arboretum Cycle, the death of the garden itself.
Director
September’s ripeness, a blessing on earth, our Indian summer.
Director
These four films spontaneously manifested as four stages of life: childhood, youth, maturity and old age. Elohim was photographed in early spring, the week of the Lunar New Year, the very spirit of Creation. Abaton was photographed a few weeks later in the full ripeness of spring, the very purity and passion of the Garden. Coda was photographed in late spring, in the aftermath of this purity, the first shades of mortality and Knowledge appearing. And finally, Ode, photographed in early summer, is a soft, textured song of the Fallen, the dissonant reds of death, seeds and rebirth. – Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
These four films spontaneously manifested as four stages of life: childhood, youth, maturity and old age. Elohim was photographed in early spring, the week of the Lunar New Year, the very spirit of Creation. Abaton was photographed a few weeks later in the full ripeness of spring, the very purity and passion of the Garden. Coda was photographed in late spring, in the aftermath of this purity, the first shades of mortality and Knowledge appearing. And finally, Ode, photographed in early summer, is a soft, textured song of the Fallen, the dissonant reds of death, seeds and rebirth. – Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
Abaton, a sacred place, a sanctuary for dreaming and healing.
Director
Light in the gardens of the San Francisco Arboretum, photographed in early spring. Elohim are divine beings, the energy of light as creation.
Director
This year our mid-summer’s night was adorned with a glorious full moon. The weeks and days preceding the solstice were magically alive with crisp, cool breezes, bright, warm sunlight, and a general sense of heartbreaking clarity. The Dreamer is born out of this most poignant San Francisco spring.
Director
A short portrait of a dear friend and collaborator on Devotional Cinema, Nick Hoff.
Director
A document from the weeks that Stan Brakhage was dying of bladder cancer. Dominic Angerame, then head of Canyon Cinema, and I went up to Victoria, Canada to visit Stan. Five weeks later while I was in Boulder, Colorado to screen my recent films, Stan passed away. There was a gathering at Stan’s daughter’s house with Jane (Brakhage) Wodening and her brother, poet, Jack Collom in Boulder. That night it began to snow and like a purification it did not stop for five days.
Director
A personal travel film shot in Oaxaca and then in France and Italy.
Director
“For most of my life, my films have been the marriage of external circumstances as seen through the needs of my own psyche. There is no other plan as such. Occasionally these explorations result in a film that is not quite what I would call a public film, something, perhaps, to be shown as camera original in the privacy of one’s apartment. I would like to use the rare opportunity of this lecture format to show two of these intimate works as original Kodachrome, each quite different from the other. One is called LUX PERPETUA II (1999-2002/2016, 31 min, 16mm) and the other, OSSUARY (1995-2005/2016, 43 min, 16mm). They are made up of outtakes from decades of shooting 16mm Kodachrome.” – Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
“For most of my life, my films have been the marriage of external circumstances as seen through the needs of my own psyche. There is no other plan as such. Occasionally these explorations result in a film that is not quite what I would call a public film, something, perhaps, to be shown as camera original in the privacy of one’s apartment. I would like to use the rare opportunity of this lecture format to show two of these intimate works as original Kodachrome, each quite different from the other. One is called LUX PERPETUA II (1999-2002/2016, 31 min, 16mm) and the other, OSSUARY (1995-2005/2016, 43 min, 16mm). They are made up of outtakes from decades of shooting 16mm Kodachrome.” – Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
Autumn, photographed during the last months of the drought year, 2015, is a stately, but intimate, seasonal tome, a celebration of the poignancy and mystery of our later years. – Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
The fourth of the “cinematic songs,” followed by two new works “made by someone closer to passing on, by someone whose sense of life and sense of cinema have become inseparable in a very real way.”
Director
The fourth of the “cinematic songs,” followed by two new works “made by someone closer to passing on, by someone whose sense of life and sense of cinema have become inseparable in a very real way.”
Director
"I have been wanting to make a shorter film in and about a briefer period of time. December was photographed during this often turbulent month and edited soon after. It has a purity of form which I find quite rewarding." - Nathaniel Dorsky
Self
In his contribution to the On Art and Artists interview series, Nathaniel Dorsky (b.1943) begins by discussing his childhood love of the John Ford film Stagecoach and its influence upon his decision to make films while attending Antioch College. Describing the affinity he developed for work operating at the intersection of film materiality and personal language, Dorsky explains how he developed his philosophy of the “devotional film” and the “microcosmic viewer.” Dorsky likens his practice to Buddhist sculpture, referring to himself as a “Japanese poet continuing aspects of the ethos of the Marxist revolution.” In the interview, the artist describes his use of the screen as an “altarpiece for the image” and emphasizes his use of editing to create works which “harmoniously coalesce.” Interview conducted by Jeffrey Skoller in May 2000, edited in 2014.
Director
"February was photographed during the first weeks of early spring in San Francisco. For me there is a haunted sense of restlessness in its form, some desire for a new freedom, a fresh sense of cinema. It feels to me to be the conclusion of an exploration that began with Triste, some 20 films earlier. What will follow, I do not know." - Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
"In most of my films I have had the burden of adding a title afterwards. Sometimes the word or words would come automatically, but more often with great difficulty. In the case of Avraham, the title came first. It was not only the film’s inspiration but the very thing that determined every shot and every cut." - Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
Summer in San Francisco is a dry and rainless season. The film, Summer, although photographed during this period of time, is not so much a description of summer, as it is a cinematic response to that world of our being. N. D.
Director
Nathaniel Dorsky's Spring conjures an abundant return of light and a retreat into nature so dense and rich that the film itself becomes a sort of wondrous garden-verdant, incandescent, with startling bursts of colour.
Director
Shot in San Francisco from autumn of last year through the winter solstice, Nathaniel Dorsky's Song evinces a cool, mysterious tone as it captures the pulse (supernal at 18fps) of the city.
Director
Often I go out shooting with my Bolex in the park’s Arboretum. During the autumn and winter of 2003/2004 I would more than likely run into Carl Rakosi, a mere 100 years old, taking his daily constitutional with his companion, Marilyn Kane. This little assemblage of footage is made up of many chance encounters with this lovely man and poet. N. D.
Director of Photography
After a lifetime, two mutual friends, George Kuchar and Carla Liss, passed away during the same period of time.
Editor
After a lifetime, two mutual friends, George Kuchar and Carla Liss, passed away during the same period of time.
Producer
After a lifetime, two mutual friends, George Kuchar and Carla Liss, passed away during the same period of time.
Director
Following a period of trauma and grief, the world around me once again declared itself in the form of one of the loveliest springs I can ever remember in San Francisco. April is intended as a companion piece for August and After, and is partly funded by a gift from Carla Liss.
Director
After a lifetime, two mutual friends, George Kuchar and Carla Liss, passed away during the same period of time.
Himself
During a tour with my films in Spain last spring, I had the pleasure of being honoured with the attention of three young people who offered me the opportunity to participate in the following interview. I was touched by their seriousness, but also perceived something out of the ordinary in their project. They seemed to have no common thread and their knowledge and respect for the subject was surprising and inspiring. How could they know so much about the American avant-garde. We arranged to meet in the lobby of my hotel on Saturday a little after breakfast.
Director
Like a memory already gone, this place of life.
Editor
In 1948, a small, struggling, semi-professional orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky began a novel project to commission new works from contemporary composers around the world.
Director
"A pastourelle and an aubade are two different forms of courtship songs from the Troubadour tradition. In this case, the film Pastourelle, a sister film to Aubade, is in the more tumultuous key of spring." - Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
An aubade is a poem or morning song evoking the first rays of the sun at daybreak. Often, it includes the atmosphere of lovers parting. This film is my first venture into shooting in color negative after having spent a lifetime shooting Kodachrome. In some sense, it is a new beginning for me. -Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
"Compline is a night devotion or prayer, the last of the canonical hours, the final act in a cycle. This film is also the last film I will be able to shoot in Kodachrome, a film stock I have shot since I was 10 years old. It is a loving duet with and a fond farewell to this noble emulsion." - Nathaniel Dorsky
Director
Dark and stately is the warm, graceful tenderness of the Sarabande.
Director
San Francisco's winter is a season unto itself. Fleeting, rain-soaked, verdant, a brief period of shadows and renewal.
Director
Conceived and photographed with the loving collaboration of Susan Vigil during the last year of her life, Song and Solitude is balanced more toward an expression of inner landscape, or what it feels like to be, rather than an exploration of the external visual world as such.
Director
All the Kodachrome footage chosen to be worked with to make the film Song and Solitude during years 2005 and 2006. During that period I still had the great privilege to be shooting Kodachrome. My method for editing was to first select the footage I wanted to use from the original camera rolls and then make an internegative and work print of that selected material to work with in the editing. (In an earlier period, I did not have to first make an internegative, but could more simply make a work print directly off the camera original, but Kodak cancelled the reversal work print film stock.)
Director
The Kodachrome Dailies consist of all the Kodachrome footage chosen to be worked with to make the film Song and Solitude during years 2005 and 2006. During that period I still had the great privilege to be shooting Kodachrome. My method for editing was to first select the footage I wanted to use from the original camera rolls and then make an internegative and work print of that selected material to work with in the editing. (In an earlier period, I did not have to first make an internegative, but could more simply make a work print directly off the camera original, but Kodak cancelled the reversal work print film stock.)
Director
Threnody is a somber but luminous progression through a delicate articulation of earthly phenomena… an offering to a friend who died. It is the second of two devotional songs, the first being The Visitation. These two films were preceeded by a series of Four Cinematic Songs: Triste, Variations, Arbor Vitae, and Love’s Refrain.
Editor
From the moment David Brower first laid eyes on the beauty of the Yosemite Valley, he wanted to the fight to preserve the American wilderness for future generations. The story of a true American legend, Monumental documents the life of this outdoorsman, filmmaker and environmental crusader, whose fiery dedication and activism not only saved the Grand Canyon (among other accomplishments) but also transformed the Sierra Club into a powerful national political force, giving birth to the modern environmental movement. Seen through Brower's own eyes - he was an accomplished filmmaker, and his stunning footage is included here-- a 1956 raft trip down Glen Canyon, before its damming, evokes the awful sadness of losing public land we've failed to protect. And in period footage of Brower's early rock-climbs (done in sneakers, with hemp ropes) and of his training in the 10th Mountain Division (who defeated the Nazis in the high Alps).
Director
The first of two devotional songs. Part One of a set of Two Devotional Songs. “The Visitation” is a gradual unfolding, an arrival so to speak. I felt the necessity to describe an occurrence, not one specifically of time and place, but one of revelation in one’s own psyche. The place of articulation is not so much in the realm of images as information, but in the response of the heart to the poignancy of the cuts.
Director
Perhaps the most delicately tactile in the series of four cinematic songs, Love's Refrain rests moment to moment on its own surface. It is a coda in twilight, a soft-spoken conclusion to a set of cinematic songs.
Director
Arbor Vitae is a gesture towards a cinema of pure being. Its atmosphere is haunted by the period in which it was shot, the year of 1999. Although the cuts are open and numerous in their intent, the underlying motivation is the delicate reveal of the transparency of presence, our tender mystery midst the elaborate unfolding of the tree of life.
Editor
Before he impressed the literary world with his books, author Paul Bowles was a music composer, collaborating with the likes of Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson. Performed here by the Eos Orchestra, Bowles's music melds with images by filmmakers Rudy Burckhardt and Nathaniel Dorsky, and, alongside interviews conducted in Tangiers, gives viewers a glimpse of true genius.
Cinematography
Before he impressed the literary world with his books, author Paul Bowles was a music composer, collaborating with the likes of Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson. Performed here by the Eos Orchestra, Bowles's music melds with images by filmmakers Rudy Burckhardt and Nathaniel Dorsky, and, alongside interviews conducted in Tangiers, gives viewers a glimpse of true genius.
Editor
This award-winning PBS documentary sweeps viewers into a seafaring adventure with a community of Polynesians, as they build traditional sailing canoes, learn how to follow the stars across the open ocean, and embark upon a 2,000-mile voyage in the wake of their ancestors.
Director
Variations is a 1998 American short silent avant-garde film directed by Nathaniel Dorsky. It is the second film in a set of "Four Cinematic Songs," which also includes Triste, Arbor Vitae, Love's Refrain.
Writer
Triste is an indication of the level of cinema language that I have been working towards. By delicately shifting the weight and solidity of the images, and bringing together subject matter not ordinarily associated, a deeper sense of impermanence and mystery can open. The images are as much pure-energy objects as representation of verbal understanding and the screen itself is transformed into a “speaking” character. The “sadness” referred to in the title is more the struggle of the film itself to become a film as such, rather than some pervasive mood. N. D.
Director
Triste is an indication of the level of cinema language that I have been working towards. By delicately shifting the weight and solidity of the images, and bringing together subject matter not ordinarily associated, a deeper sense of impermanence and mystery can open. The images are as much pure-energy objects as representation of verbal understanding and the screen itself is transformed into a “speaking” character. The “sadness” referred to in the title is more the struggle of the film itself to become a film as such, rather than some pervasive mood. N. D.
Associate Editor
The psychological and emotional motivations of gay sexual fetish, especially relating to gay male teens maturing into men and their sexual exploits.
Daniel
This film is a portrait of the passage of one year in the lives of some San Francisco friends, circa 1988 (before the dot.coming of the city), a slow marijuana hazed story which drifts like the fabled fog, encompassing the quirks and habits of a generation that made the city theirs, if only for a while. Very obliquely Rembrandt Laughing sketches the time and place, encompassing the AIDS epidemic, the casual sexual revolution, the debris of '68 lingering in the air. A quiet, very San Francisco comedy of life among a small group of friends. Rembrandt Laughing was improvised over the period of about a month by Jost and his friends, mostly acting non-professionals.
Director
“Renga is a linked-verse form of Japanese poetry that, though still practiced today, reached its peak between the 13th and 16th centuries. It is characterized by being a group composition, typically in the presence of judges and an audience, with poets rapidly contributing stanzas such that each new stanza addresses only the previous stanza; there is no overarching plot development, and the overall structure is a chain, not a conventional, linear narrative… In 1989, I had the great privilege to be involved in a film renga that was produced in the graduate film seminar led by Nathaniel Dorsky at the San Francisco Art Institute.” —Eric Theise
Director
17 Reasons Why was photographed with a variety of semi-ancient regular 8 cameras and is projected unslit as 16mm. The four image format gives a look at the film frame itself.
Director
Sand, wind, and light intermingle with the emulsions. The viewer is the star.
Editor
An investigation of the king of the Beat Generation.
Co-Producer
An investigation of the king of the Beat Generation.
Director
The images in this film come from an extensive collection of out-dated raw stock that has been processed without being exposed, and sometimes rephotographed in closer format. Each pattern of grain takes on its own emotional life, an evocation of different aspects of our own being.
Director
Ariel is a highly energetic and colorful divertissement of abstract film achieved with improvised home color processing and a physical, almost sculptural manipulation of the film surface.
Director
A visual poem encapsulating a full year across all the seasons
Himself
Warren Sonbert described Divided Loyalties as a film 'about art vs. industry and their various crossovers.' According to film critic Amy Taubin, "There is a clear analogy between the filmmaker and the dancers, acrobats and skilled workers who make up so much of his subject matter." -- Jon Gartenberg
Director of Photography
There's shakin', quakin' and plenty of booty to be enjoyed when the perky gals from Aloha High School shimmy their groove things in this red-hot sequel to The Cheerleaders. Rainbeaux Smith (from the first film) is back ... and pregnant!
Producer
There's shakin', quakin' and plenty of booty to be enjoyed when the perky gals from Aloha High School shimmy their groove things in this red-hot sequel to The Cheerleaders. Rainbeaux Smith (from the first film) is back ... and pregnant!
Writer
There's shakin', quakin' and plenty of booty to be enjoyed when the perky gals from Aloha High School shimmy their groove things in this red-hot sequel to The Cheerleaders. Rainbeaux Smith (from the first film) is back ... and pregnant!
Editor
Look Park presents close up shots of a country stream viewed in bright sunlight. The film opens with wide shots of the park to establish the location of the water, then focuses in very tight on the abstract reflections and shadows.
Director
Initially titled "Books for all". A moving institutional commission in which the filmmakers lovingly portray New Jersey's public library system.
Initially titled "Books for all". A moving institutional commission in which the filmmakers lovingly portray New Jersey's public library system.
Himself
Stoned people, music, movement, fields.
Director
Dorsky’s first artistic exchange with Hiler, and his passage into a silent cinema of “open form montage
Director
Dorsky’s three earliest works (made when he “entered the realm of poetic filmmaking as an active maker”), all sound films, with dailies for two later works shot on precious Kodachrome stock.
Director
Dorsky’s three earliest works (made when he “entered the realm of poetic filmmaking as an active maker”), all sound films, with dailies for two later works shot on precious Kodachrome stock.
Director
Dorsky’s three earliest works (made when he “entered the realm of poetic filmmaking as an active maker”), all sound films, with dailies for two later works shot on precious Kodachrome stock.
Director
Catch A Tiger is an educational film that shows some of the spontaneous results in music, dance and art when the nursery school child's innate creative forces are permitted to find expression in a favorable environment. The audio records the children exploring the sounds of instruments, rhythmic language and song. Part one, was recorded and filmed at the Griffin Nursery School at Berkeley, CA, Elinor Griffin Teacher-Director Part two filmed at the South Mountain Cooperative Nursery School at Millburn, New Jersey, Blanche Dorsky Teacher-Director From Nathaniel Dorsky: Catch A Tiger, which showed the activity in two nursery schools that experimented with allowing four year olds to improvise in music and visual constructions and assemblages. I was inspired to do this by my mother, Blanche Dorsky, whose nursery school was one of the two presented.
Director
The ever-presence of death.
Director
Autumn lake in San Francisco.
Editorial Production Assistant
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.
