Nathaniel Dorsky

Directing·Jan 1, 1943·New York City, New York, USA

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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".

Film	Credit
Dreams Reveal a Weightless World2024 · Director, Director of Photography	Director, Director of Photography
O Death2023 · Director, Director of Photography	Director, Director of Photography
Place d'or2023 · Director	Director
Caracole (for Izcali)2023 · Director, Director of Photography	Director, Director of Photography
Pavane2023 · Director	Director
Dialogues2022 · Director	Director
Naos2022 · Director	Director
Caracole (for Mac)2022 · Director	Director
IInterval2022 · Director	Director
Ember Days2021 · Director	Director
Terce2021 · Director	Director
Emanations2020 · Director	Director
William2020 · Director	Director
Temple Sleep2020 · Director	Director
Lamentations2020 · Director	Director
Canticles2019 · Director	Director
Caracole (for Cecilia)2019 · Director	Director
Apricity2019 · Director	Director
Interlude2019 · Director	Director
Calyx2018 · Director	Director
Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle)2018 · Director	Director
Arboretum Cycle2018 · Director	Director
September2018 · Director	Director
Epilogue2018 · Director	Director
Monody2018 · Director	Director
Elohim2017 · Director	Director
Abaton2017 · Director	Director
Ode2017 · Director	Director
Coda2017 · Director	Director
The Dreamer2016 · Director	Director
Ossuary2016 · Director	Director
Lux Perpetua II2016 · Director	Director
Lux Perpetua I2016 · Director	Director
Death of a Poet2016 · Director	Director
Other Archer2016 · Director	Director
Autumn2015 · Director	Director
Prelude2015 · Director	Director
Intimations2015 · Director	Director
AAvraham2014 · Director	Director
DDecember2014 · Director	Director
FFebruary2014 · Director	Director
SSummer2013 · Director	Director
Spring2013 · Director	Director
SSong2013 · Director	Director
Kodachrome Carl Rakosi in Golden Gate Park2013 · Director	Director
August and After2012 · Director, Producer, Director of Photography	Director, Producer, Director of Photography
April2012 · Director	Director
The Return2011 · Director	Director
Pastourelle2010 · Director	Director
AAubade2010 · Director	Director
Compline2009 · Director	Director
Sarabande2008 · Director	Director
Winter2008 · Director	Director
Song and Solitude2006 · Director	Director
Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 1)2006 · Director	Director
Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 2)2006 · Director	Director
Threnody2004 · Director	Director
The Visitation2002 · Director	Director
Love's Refrain2001 · Director	Director
Arbor Vitae2000 · Director	Director
Variations1998 · Director	Director
Triste1996 · Director, Writer	Director, Writer
Renga1989 · Director	Director
Alaya1987 · Director	Director
17 Reasons Why1987 · Director	Director
Pneuma1983 · Director	Director
AAriel1983 · Director	Director
Hours for Jerome1982 · Actor, Director	Actor, Director
Library1970 · Actor, Director	Actor, Director
Fool’s Spring (Two Personal Gifts)1967 · Director	Director
Summerwind1966 · Director	Director
A Fall Trip Home1965 · Director	Director
Ingreen1964 · Director	Director
Catch A Tiger1963 · Director	Director