Nathaniel Dorsky In Person
Presented in Association with Canyon Cinema and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Please note that a variation on this program screens on Sunday, November 15
Please Note that this screening is SOLD OUT.
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…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

With a delicate and unique clarity of focus, the serenely silent 16mm films of Bay Area treasure Nathaniel Dorsky embody a mindful concern for the epiphanies of each passing moment and a rare sensitivity to the ephemeralities of light. In celebration of the local premiere of four new films—each deeply concerned the delicacy and sorrow of being alive in the world—we present three silent evenings (and one afternoon) of this master filmmaker’s most recent works. (Steve Polta) Please note that this series of four screenings includes one program of four films which is screened on two evenings—Thursday, November 12 & Friday, November 13—and a second program presented in two variations on Saturday evening (November 14) and Sunday afternoon (November 15). Nathaniel Dorsky In Person at all screenings.

Screening Saturday, November 14:
Song (2013): Song was photographed in San Francisco from early October through the winter solstice in late December, 2012.
Intimations (2015, Bay Area premiere): How delicately the light imbues our fleeting life.
Prelude (2015, Bay Area premiere): It is a profound and rarified pleasure to be photographing and editing film at this most tentative of times. To do so is to behold the soulful beauty and tenderness of cinema, its depths and joys as human experience.

If we do relinquish control, we suddenly see a hidden world, one that has existed all along right in front of us. In a flash, the uncanny presence of the poetic and vibrant world, ripe with mystery, stands before us.
—Nathaniel Dorsky, Devotional Cinema

Pictured above: Nathaniel Dorsky: Prelude (2015)