The second part of Nathaniel Dorsky’s retrospective includes films he has made in the past three years, including the COVID-19 pandemic era. All pictures will be screened from 16mm film.
Consistently opposing the digitization of his works, Nathaniel Dorsky believes that this process will make them sterile. Only a properly set up projection of a film copy can convey the entire richness of light and color inherent in his movies, available exclusively on 16mm film and stored in two film archives, Canyon Cinema in San Francisco and Light Cone in Paris. Due to the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, none of the MIEFF curators had the opportunity to watch Dorsky’s films beforehand, making the program a real experiment. However, Nathaniel wrote short commentaries to his works to help the audience and the festival team prepare for the mystery of an encounter with the pure art of cinema.
Interlude
A brief lost moment lies between.
Interlude
USA, 2019. 12 min. 18+
Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle)
Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle) has three sections. It is in the spirit of the early Chinese landscape colophons, a text added to the horizontal scroll at a later date from when the landscape itself was enacted. Colophon was not made to be shown along with the Arboretum cycle, but a new thing, a spring later, a different maker, so to speak.
Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle)
USA, 2018. 14 min. 18+
Lamentations
Lamentations is a cinematic tumble through diverse dreamscapes in a man-made world.
Lamentations
USA, 2020. 14 min. 18+
Temple Sleep
Temple Sleep was photographed and edited during the initial virus lockdown. The fly casting pools in Golden Gate Park became a mind-healing place for me, a calming space of sacredness tempered by the fear of the on-coming unknown. A place of feminine power.
Temple Sleep
USA, 2020. 19 min. 18+
Calyx
I photographed Calyx during the rather tense twenty-one days preceding my open heart surgery to replace an aortic valve and then shipped the footage off to the lab the day before my operation. I edited the twenty-one rolls about three weeks after coming home from a rather dramatic nine days in the hospital. I hope this little film captures some of the feelings of dread mixed with an elegiac feeling for our world. The calyx is the husk surrounding the tender bud of a soon-to-be flower.
Calyx
USA, 2018. 13 min. 18+
Ember Days
Ember Days is the fifth film made during the COVID crisis… Primordial spring is in the air; all is tentative.
Ember Days
USA, 2021. 11 min. 18+