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Nathaniel Dorsky
Director

Nathaniel Dorsky

1 Jan 1943Born
83Age
78Credits
New York City, New York, USABirthplace

Biography

Raised in New York on a steady diet of Westerns and Disney True-Life 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 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.

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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".

Known for

Filmography

  1. 2024Dreams Reveal a Weightless WorldFilm: Director
  2. 2023O DeathFilm: Director
  3. 2023Place d'orFilm: Director
  4. 2023Caracole (for Izcali)Film: Director
  5. 2023PavaneFilm: Director
  6. 2022DialoguesFilm: Director
  7. 2022NaosFilm: Director
  8. 2022Caracole (for Mac)Film: Director
  9. 2022IntervalFilm: Director
  10. 2021Ember DaysFilm: Director
  11. 2021TerceFilm: Director
  12. 2020EmanationsFilm: Director
  13. 2020WilliamFilm: Director
  14. 2020Temple SleepFilm: Director
  15. 2020LamentationsFilm: Director
  16. 2019CanticlesFilm: Director
  17. 2019Caracole (for Cecilia)Film: Director
  18. 2019ApricityFilm: Director
  19. 2019InterludeFilm: Director
  20. 2018CalyxFilm: Director
  21. 2018Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle)Film: Director
  22. 2018Arboretum CycleFilm: Director
  23. 2018SeptemberFilm: Director
  24. 2018MonodyFilm: Director
  25. 2018EpilogueFilm: Director
  26. 2017ElohimFilm: Director
  27. 2017AbatonFilm: Director
  28. 2017CodaFilm: Director
  29. 2017OdeFilm: Director
  30. 2016The DreamerFilm: Director
  31. 2016OssuaryFilm: Director
  32. 2016Lux Perpetua IIFilm: Director
  33. 2016Lux Perpetua IFilm: Director
  34. 2016Death of a PoetFilm: Director
  35. 2016Other ArcherFilm: Director
  36. 2015AutumnFilm: Director
  37. 2015IntimationsFilm: Director
  38. 2015PreludeFilm: Director
  39. 2014AvrahamFilm: Director
  40. 2014DecemberFilm: Director
  41. 2014FebruaryFilm: Director
  42. 2013SummerFilm: Director
  43. 2013SpringFilm: Director
  44. 2013SongFilm: Director
  45. 2013Kodachrome Carl Rakosi in Golden Gate ParkFilm: Director
  46. 2012New ShoresFilm
  47. 2012August and AfterFilm: Director
  48. 2012AprilFilm: Director
  49. 2011The ReturnFilm: Director
  50. 2010PastourelleFilm: Director
  51. 2010AubadeFilm: Director
  52. 2009ComplineFilm: Director
  53. 2008SarabandeFilm: Director
  54. 2008WinterFilm: Director
  55. 2006Song and SolitudeFilm: Director
  56. 2006Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 1)Film: Director
  57. 2006Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 2)Film: Director
  58. 2004ThrenodyFilm: Director
  59. 2002The VisitationFilm: Director
  60. 2001Love's RefrainFilm: Director
  61. 2000Arbor VitaeFilm: Director
  62. 1998VariationsFilm: Director
  63. 1996TristeFilm: Director, Writer
  64. 1989Rembrandt LaughingFilm: Daniel
  65. 1989RengaFilm: Director
  66. 1987AlayaFilm: Director
  67. 198717 Reasons WhyFilm: Director
  68. 1983PneumaFilm: Director
  69. 1983ArielFilm: Director
  70. 1982Hours for JeromeFilm: Director
  71. 1976Revenge of the CheerleadersFilm: Screenplay
  72. 1970LibraryFilm: Director
  73. 1968HolidayFilm
  74. 1967Fool’s Spring (Two Personal Gifts)Film: Director
  75. 1966SummerwindFilm: Director
  76. 1965A Fall Trip HomeFilm: Director
  77. 1964IngreenFilm: Director
  78. 1963Catch A TigerFilm: Director

Biography and credits from TMDB. This website uses TMDB and the TMDB APIs but is not endorsed, certified, or otherwise approved by TMDB.