Co-Presented with San Francisco Art Institute Public Lecture Series

Throughout his career, Nathaniel Dorsky has made personal, poetic films composed of images gathered in the course of his daily life. A profound use of silence accompanies exquisite photography and meticulous editing to raise Dorsky’s cinematic language to an ecstatic pitch. Arbor Vitae, Dorsky’s conclusion to a trilogy that included Triste and Variations, was recently premiered at the New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde series. Tonight’s screening will mark Arbor Vitae’s West Coast premiere, as well as the first time the trilogy has been screened in its entirety. “Arbor Vitae is a gesture towards a cinema of pure being. …the underlying motivation is the delicate revelation of the transparency of presence, our tender mystery amidst the elaborate unfolding of the tree of life.” (N. Dorsky)