Nathaniel Dorsky (born 1943 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

), is an American experimental filmmaker and film editor who has been making films since 1963. He attended

Antioch College Antioch College is a private liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Founded in 1850 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1852 as a non-sectarian institution; politician and education reformer Horace Mann was its f ...

in Yellow Springs,

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

where he developed his interest in filmmaking. He won an

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

for the film ''Gauguin in Tahiti: Search for Paradise'' which was directed by Martin Carr in 1967.

Life and career

Dorsky was a visiting instructor at Princeton University in 2008 and he has been the recipient of many awards including a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

1997 and grants from the

National Endowment of the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

, two from the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

, and one from the LEF Foundation, the

Foundation for Contemporary Arts The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), is a nonprofit based foundation in New York City that offers financial support and recognition to contemporary performing and visual artists through awards for artistic innovation and potential. It was ...

Grants to Artists award (2006), and the

California Arts Council The California Arts Council is a state agency based in Sacramento, United States. Its eight council members are appointed by the Governor and the state Legislature. The agency's mission is to advance California through arts, culture and creativi ...

. He has presented films at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, the

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

, the Tate Modern, the Filmoteca Española, Madrid, the Prague Film Archive, the Vienna Film Museum, the

Pacific Film Archive The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, formerly abbreviated as BAM/PFA) are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director from ...

, the

Harvard Film Archive The Harvard Film Archive (HFA) is a film archive and cinema located in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dedicated to the collection, preservation and exhibition of film, the HFA houses a c ...

, Princeton University, Yale University, and frequently exhibits new work at the

New York Film Festival The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, it is ...

's Views from the Avant-Garde and the Wavelengths program of the

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a permane ...

. In spring 2012, Dorsky took actively part in the three-month exposition of

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in ...

. 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. 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 Canyon Cinema is an American nonprofit organization for distributing independent, avant-garde, and artist-made films. After starting in the 1960s as an exhibition program, it grew to include a nationwide newsletter and a distribution cooperative. ...

in San Francisco and

Light Cone In special and general relativity, a light cone (or "null cone") is the path that a flash of light, emanating from a single event (localized to a single point in space and a single moment in time) and traveling in all directions, would take thro ...

in Paris. Prints of stills from his films are available at the

Gallery Paule Anglim Anglim Trimble Gallery, formerly Gallery Paule Anglim, and Anglim Gilbert Gallery, is a contemporary commercial art gallery which is located at Minnesota Street Project, 1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, California The gallery was founded by P ...

, San Francisco, and the Peter Blum Gallery, New York City.

Style

"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 “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.

Awards

* Emmy Award for the film ''Gauguin in Tahiti: Search for Paradise'' 1967

Filmography

*''Ingreen'' (1964) *''A Fall Trip Home'' (1964) *''Summerwind'' (1965) *''Two Personal Gifts'' (AKA ''Fool's Spring'') (1966–67) (with

Jerome Hiler Jerome Hiler (born 1943) is an American experimental filmmaker, painter and stained glass artist. Biography Hiler began his filmmaking career alongside Robert Cowan, as a projectionist at The Filmmaker Cinematheque at 125 West 41st St. in New ...

) *''

Hours for Jerome ''Hours for Jerome'' (1980–82) is an American silent experimental film in two parts directed by Nathaniel Dorsky recording the daily events of Dorsky and his partner, artist Jerome Hiler, around Lake Owassa in New Jersey and in Manhattan. The ...

Part 1&2'' (1966-70/82) *''Pneuma'' (1977–83) *''Ariel'' (1983) *''Alaya'' (1976–87) *''17 Reasons Why'' (1985–87) *''Triste'' (1974–96) *''

Variations Variation or Variations may refer to: Science and mathematics * Variation (astronomy), any perturbation of the mean motion or orbit of a planet or satellite, particularly of the moon * Genetic variation, the difference in DNA among individuals ...

'' (1992–98) *''Arbor Vitae'' (1999-00) *''Love's Refrain'' (2000–01) *''The Visitation'' (2002) *''Threnody'' (2004) *''Song and Solitude'' (2005–06) *''Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 1)'' (2005-2006) *''Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 2)'' (2005-2006) *''Winter'' (2007) *''Sarabande'' (2008) *''Compline'' (2009) *''Aubade'' (2010) *''Pastourelle'' (2010) *''The Return'' (2011) *''August and After'' (2012) *''April'' (2012) *''Song'' (2013 *''Spring'' (2013) *''Summer'' (2013) *''December'' (2014) *''February'' (2014) *''Avraham'' (2014) *''Intimations'' (2015) *''Prelude'' (2015) *''Autumn'' (2016) *''The Dreamer'' (2016) *''Lux Perpetua I'' (2000-2002/2016) Original Kodachrome only *''Lux Perpetua II'' (1999-2002/2016) Original Kodachrome only *''Other Archer'' (2003/2016) Original Kodachrome only *''Death of a Poet'' (2003/2016) Original Kodachrome only *''Ossuary'' (1995-2005/2016) Original Kodachrome only *''

Arboretum Cycle The Arboretum Cycle is a seven-part film cycle by American experimental filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky. The films—''Elohim'', ''Abaton'', ''Coda'', ''Ode'', ''September'', ''Monody'', and ''Epilogue''—were shot in 2017 at the Strybing Arboretum in ...

'' (2017, 137 min.) comprising the following films: #''Elohim'' (2017) #''Abaton'' (2017) #''Coda'' (2017) #''Ode'' (2017) #''September'' (2017) #''Monody'' (2017) #''Epilogue'' (2017) *''Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle)'' (2018) *''Calyx'' (2018) *''Apricity'' (2019) *''Interlude'' (2019) *''Canticles'' (2019) *''Lamentations'' (2020) *''Temple Sleep'' (2020) *''William'' (2020) *''Emanations'' (2020) *''Ember Days'' (2021) *''Terce'' (2021) *''Interval'' (2021) *''Caracole (for Mac)'' (2022) *''Naos'' (2022) *''Dialogues'' (2022) *''Place d'Or'' (2023) *''Pavane'' (2023)

References

External links

"about Nathaniel Dorsky" collected online articles, documents, comments and news, about and by filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky
Official website
Link to ART FORUM: "Tone Poems" by P. ADAMS SITNEY Article on the films of Nathaniel Dorsky, November 2007, PDF
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dorsky, Nathaniel 1943 births American experimental filmmakers American male writers Antioch College alumni LGBT film directors LGBT people from New York (state) Living people Silent film directors