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Xcèntric 2022

Illuminated Hours. Programme 1: The recent films of Nathaniel Dorsky

Audiovisuals

This session forms part of a ten-programme cycle entitled Illuminated Hours. The devotional cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, organised in collaboration with the Filmoteca de Catalunya and Zumzeig Cinema, including a large part of their respective filmographies. The screenings are accompanied by an installation by Nathaniel Dorsky and the publication of a book on the early days of cinema and shared life of these two filmmakers.

In the wake of his cycle of films made in San Francisco's huge botanical garden, in shooting these five films, Dorsky used his Bolex camera as a musical instrument, establishing rhythms and nuances by adjusting the shutter speed, focus, in-camera edits and panning. Ember Days and Emanations progress from these improvisations, punctuated by deployments of his particular poetic montage. Apricity ends with a moving portrait of the writer Jane Wodening, while, in Terce, the cineaste films himself, for the first time in his filmography, reflected in the mirror. Lamentations is one of the films in which Dorsky most fully achieves his cinematographic ideal: a montage (which he calls "polyvalent") in which images of a mysterious beauty are strung together according to purely sensorial needs, suspending any possible spatial, temporal or narrative logic.

Apricity, Nathaniel Dorsky, United States, 2019, 16 mm, no sound, 22'.

Lamentations, Nathaniel Dorsky, United States, 2020, 16 mm, no sound, 14'.

Ember Days, Nathaniel Dorsky, United States, 2021, 16 mm, no sound, 10'.

Emanations, Nathaniel Dorsky, United States, 2020, 16 mm, no sound, 16'.

Terce, Nathaniel Dorsky, United States, 2021, 16 mm, no sound, 16'.

Copies from Light Cone.

Other screenings from Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler will take place in Filmoteca de Catalunya and Zumzeig Cinema during this week. For further information:

https://www.filmoteca.cat/web/ca/cicle/hores-illuminades-el-cinema-devocional-de-nathaniel-dorsky-i-jerome-hiler 

https://zumzeigcine.coop/cinema/films/blitz-40-nathaniel-dorsky/

Directors: Nathaniel Dorsky

This activity is part of Xcèntric 2022

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