Biography
Nathaniel Dorsky (born July 28, 1943) raised in New York on a steady diet of Westerns and Disney True-Life Adventures started shooting 8mm movies at the age of eleven. In 1963, when he had just turned 20, he made Ingreen, a boldly symbolic psychodrama about a young man’s sexual coming of age. At that film’s premiere, he met soon-to-be fellow filmmaker Jerome Hiler, who would become his partner in life and a major inspiration for his work. (“We were filming for one another,” Hiler recently said.) In 1971 the two moved to San Francisco, where they’ve lived ever since. Around the same time, Dorsky entered a decade-long creative silence. He returned in 1982 with Hours for Jerome, a 55-minute feature compiled from footage shot between 1966 and 1970. Like all of Dorsky’s subsequent work, it’s a kind of cinematic lyric poem, entirely silent and rooted in a centuries-old tradition of devotional art (in this case, medieval illuminated manuscripts and prayer books). The rest of the Eighties found Dorsky experimenting with new forms and materials: 1987’s Alaya was made up entirely of footage of shifting sand, and 1983’s Ariel, which had a rare public screening at this year’s New York Film Festival, is a beautiful hand-processed film full of thin, tremulous vertical lines and see-sawing horizontals. It was with 1996’s Triste—edited from over 20 years’ worth of footage—that Dorsky, as he once put it, fully arrived at “the level of cinema language that I have been working towards.” Since then, he’s made 16 luminous, description-defying short films, each with their own distinct tones and shadings. In films like Compline (09), August and After (12), and his two most recent titles, Spring and Song, Dorsky creates what he’s often called a “floating world,” in which street scenes, household interiors, meadows, rivers and forests are transformed into playgrounds for light, color and shadow. In a field often dominated by frenetic cutting and/or prolonged stasis, Dorsky’s films unfurl gradually but steadily in a kind of hushed suspension. They’re often attempts to do with light and texture what, in his book Devotional Cinema, Dorsky praised Mozart for having done in key changes and melodic lines: to “wed [a] style to the human metabolism in every detail".
Directed 66
2020s
- 2024
Dreams Reveal a Weightless World
Director
- 2023
O Death
Director
Place d'or
Director
Caracole (for Izcali)
Director
Pavane
Director
- 2022
Dialogues
Director
Naos
Director
Caracole (for Mac)
Director
- 2021
Ember Days
Director
Terce
Director
- 2020
Emanations
Director
William
Director
Temple Sleep
Director
Lamentations
Director
2010s
- 2019
Canticles
Director
Caracole (for Cecilia)
Director
Apricity
Director
Interlude
Director
- 2018
Calyx
Director
Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle)
Director
Arboretum Cycle
Director
September
Director
Monody
Director
Epilogue
Director
- 2017
Elohim
Director
Abaton
Director
Coda
Director
Ode
Director
- 2016
The Dreamer
Director
Ossuary
Director
Lux Perpetua II
Director
Lux Perpetua I
Director
Death of a Poet
Director
Other Archer
Director
- 2015
Autumn
Director
Intimations
Director
Prelude
Director
- 2013
Spring
Director
Kodachrome Carl Rakosi in Golden Gate Park
Director
- 2012
August and After
Director
April
Director
- 2011
The Return
Director
- 2010
Pastourelle
Director
2000s
- 2009
Compline
Director
- 2008
Sarabande
Director
Winter
Director
- 2006
Song and Solitude
Director
Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 1)
Director
Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 2)
Director
- 2004
Threnody
Director
- 2002
The Visitation
Director
- 2001
Love's Refrain
Director
- 2000
Arbor Vitae
Director
1990s
- 1998
Variations
Director
- 1996
Triste
Director
1980s
- 1989
Renga
Director
- 1987
Alaya
Director
17 Reasons Why
Director
- 1983
Pneuma
Director
- 1982
Hours for Jerome
Director
1970s
- 1970
Library
Director
1960s
- 1967
Fool’s Spring (Two Personal Gifts)
Director
- 1966
Summerwind
Director
- 1965
A Fall Trip Home
Director
- 1964
Ingreen
Director
- 1963
Catch A Tiger
Director
Edited 16
2020s
- 2024
Dreams Reveal a Weightless World
Editor
- 2023
O Death
Editor
Caracole (for Izcali)
Editor
- 2021
Ember Days
Editor
2010s
- 2014
Fortune
Editorial Production Assistant
- 2012
August and After
Editor
- 2010
Music Makes a City: A Louisville Orchestra Story
Editor
2000s
- 2004
Threnody
Editor
- 2000
Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles
Editor
1990s
- 1999
Wayfinders: A Pacific Odyssey
Editor
- 1995
Black Sheep Boy
Associate Editor
- 1994
The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg
Editor
1980s
- 1986
What Happened to Kerouac?
Editor
- 1982
Hours for Jerome
Editor
1970s
- 1974
Look Park
Editor
Other crew 9
2020s
- 2023
Caracole (for Izcali)
Cinematography
- 2021
Ember Days
Cinematography
2000s
- 2004
Threnody
Cinematography
- 2001
Love's Refrain
Cinematography
- 2000
Arbor Vitae
Cinematography
Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles
Cinematography
1990s
- 1998
Variations
Cinematography
- 1996
Triste
Cinematography
1980s
- 1982
Hours for Jerome
Cinematography
Acted in 5
2010s
- 2012
New Shores
Movie
1980s
- 1989
Rembrandt Laughing
Daniel
- 1982
Hours for Jerome
Movie
1970s
- 1970
Library
Movie
1960s
- 1968
Holiday
Movie
Camera 4
2020s
- 2024
Dreams Reveal a Weightless World
Director of Photography
- 2023
O Death
Director of Photography
2010s
- 2012
August and After
Director of Photography
Produced 3
2010s
- 2012
August and After
Producer
1980s
- 1986
What Happened to Kerouac?
Co-Producer
1970s
- 1976
Wrote 1
1970s
- 1976
Appearances9
2020s
- 2026
Illuminations
Self
2010s
- 2016
Memories of Jerome Hiler
Self
- 2014
Nathaniel Dorsky: An Interview
Self
- 2011
Interview with Nathaniel Dorsky
Himself
1970s
- 1978
Divided Loyalties
Himself
- 1977
Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives
Self
- 1972
Carriage Trade
himself
1960s
- 1968
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Self
- 1967
Letter to D.H. in Paris
Himself