Nathaniel Dorsky at the Harvard Film Archive

From: Brooke Holgerson (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Nov 07 2007 - 09:32:17 PST


An Evening with Nathaniel Dorsky
Monday November 12 at 7pm
 
Since the early 1960s, Nathaniel Dorsky has been crafting a remarkable
body of work that offers one of the most exquisitely beautiful and
contemplative experiences of pure cinema to emerge from the American
avant-garde. Entirely silent and designed to be screened at non-standard
projection speeds, Dorsky's films are inherently concerned with the
cinematic experience of light and time. In his insightful meditation on
film, /Devotional Cinema, /Dorsky states: "It is the direct connection
of light and audience that interests me. The screen continually shifts
its dimensionality from being an image-window, to a floating energy
field, to simply light on the wall. ...Silence allows these
articulations, which are both poetic and sculptural at the same time, to
be revealed and appreciated."
 
/Special thanks to the Academy Foundation./
 
*Director Nathaniel Dorsky in person*
*Special Event Tickets $10*
_Song and Solitude_
"Old School doesn't describe it. Dorsky has achieved such a subtle
mastery over the most basic means of cinematic expression --
composition, duration, juxtaposition -- that he can squeeze a wealth of
emotional vibrations out of the silent, seemingly banal interplay of
foreground and background objects. A formalist with a brimming, elegiac
soul, Dorsky will gently rock your attitude toward cinematic landscape.
His world is a sublime mystery measured by patience and unmatched visual
insight." -- Paul Arthur, /Film Comment/
Directed by Nathaniel Dorsky
US 2005/2006, 16mm, color, silent, 21 min.//
 
_Threnody_
"/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/." -- ND
Directed by Nathaniel Dorsky
US 2004, 16mm, color, silent, 25 min.//
 
_The Visitation _
"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." -- ND
Directed by Nathaniel Dorsky
US 2002, 16mm, color, silent, 18 min.

The Harvard Film Archive is located at 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA
617-495-4700 or http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa for more information

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