American avant-garde film scholar Evgeny Mayzel will explain the significance of Nathaniel Dorsky’s work within the tradition of religious cinema and discuss the poetics of his early and mature films.
Evgeny Mayzel will speak about the development of Nathaniel Dorsky’s style, trace his genealogy within the American avant-garde tradition and his connections with fellow-filmmakers, and discuss Dorsky’s poetics, drawing on the early and mature works as well as the writings by the director in search of the self-symbol of the world relieved of the illustrative role in any narratives and pregnant with miracles.
Nathaniel Dorsky’s practice has developed at the intersection of religious and avant-garde film, including the twenty-first century slow cinema. His works present film as a unique, intimate practice of religious service, a pantheist discipline that reveals the bliss of creation, lived by the filmmaker and the viewer.
The talk accompanies the program of Nathaniel Dorsky’s films at the 6th Moscow International Experimental Film Festival (MIEFF).
