Nathaniel Dorsky's Spring conjures an abundant return of light and a retreat into nature so dense and rich that the film itself becomes a sort of wondrous garden-verdant, incandescent, with startling bursts of colour.
A document from the weeks that Stan Brakhage was dying of bladder cancer. Dominic Angerame, then head of Canyon Cinema, and I went up to Victoria, Canada to visit Stan. Five weeks later while I was in Boulder, Colorado to screen my recent films, Stan passed away. There was a gathering at Stan’s...
“For most of my life, my films have been the marriage of external circumstances as seen through the needs of my own psyche. There is no other plan as such. Occasionally these explorations result in a film that is not quite what I would call a public film, something, perhaps, to be shown as camera...
Following a period of trauma and grief, the world around me once again declared itself in the form of one of the loveliest springs I can ever remember in San Francisco. April is intended as a companion piece for August and After, and is partly funded by a gift from Carla Liss.
"Compline is a night devotion or prayer, the last of the canonical hours, the final act in a cycle. This film is also the last film I will be able to shoot in Kodachrome, a film stock I have shot since I was 10 years old. It is a loving duet with and a fond farewell to this noble emulsion." -...
A Naos is the inner room of an ancient Greek temple in which the image of the deity celebrated by that temple is depicted (usually in the form of a statue of that deity). Jacob, a young filmmaker, offered to help me with some shooting and became the center of the film itself. N.D.
The images in this film come from an extensive collection of out-dated raw stock that has been processed without being exposed, and sometimes rephotographed in closer format. Each pattern of grain takes on its own emotional life, an evocation of different aspects of our own being.
Mac McGinnes, a dear friend and neighbor, often sat in with me during my editing sessions. This brief but light-filled farewell was made for Mac upon his passing. -- N.D.
"Seven and a half weeks ago, I had open heart surgery...In the three weeks to go before the operation, I bought 21 rolls of film and said 'I'm going to shoot a roll of film every day until I go to the hospital.' ... This film is shot with the overall feeling for me, personally, that it's elegiac,...
Often I go out shooting with my Bolex in the park’s Arboretum. During the autumn and winter of 2003/2004 I would more than likely run into Carl Rakosi, a mere 100 years old, taking his daily constitutional with his companion, Marilyn Kane. This little assemblage of footage is made up of many...
"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" - N.D.
The first in a brief series of small personal gifts, made in celebration of the first birthday of Cecilia, the daughter of Antonella Bonfanti who for many years managed Canyon Cinema in San Francisco.
In his contribution to the On Art and Artists interview series, Nathaniel Dorsky (b.1943) begins by discussing his childhood love of the John Ford film Stagecoach and its influence upon his decision to make films while attending Antioch College. Describing the affinity he developed for work...
Conceived and photographed with the loving collaboration of Susan Vigil during the last year of her life, Song and Solitude is balanced more toward an expression of inner landscape, or what it feels like to be, rather than an exploration of the external visual world as such.
