Nathaniel Dorsky Movies

An exploration of the cycle of life and the inevitability of passing.

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...

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...

Norman’s father was a society portrait painter. After his father’s death, Norman faces the burden of inheriting his father’s...

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 aubade is a poem or morning song evoking the first rays of the sun at daybreak. Often, it includes the atmosphere of lovers parting. This film is...

Shot in San Francisco from autumn of last year through the winter solstice, Nathaniel Dorsky's Song evinces a cool, mysterious tone as it captures...

Dorsky’s three earliest works (made when he “entered the realm of poetic filmmaking as an active maker”), all sound films, with...

Dark and stately is the warm, graceful tenderness of the Sarabande.

Look Park presents close up shots of a country stream viewed in bright sunlight. The film opens with wide shots of the park to establish the location...

Ariel is a highly energetic and colorful divertissement of abstract film achieved with improvised home color processing and a physical, almost...

“Renga is a linked-verse form of Japanese poetry that, though still practiced today, reached its peak between the 13th and 16th centuries....

"A pastourelle and an aubade are two different forms of courtship songs from the Troubadour tradition. In this case, the film Pastourelle, a sister...

A silent portrait of Dorsky's collaborator exploring her Aztec heritage.

Ossuary was made up of the Kodachrome outs and trims from more than a decade of shooting and making films in Kodachrome. This new film, Dreams Reveal...

Epilogue is the seventh film in the Arboretum Cycle, a descent into the dark damp earth, a period of dying.

Autumn, photographed during the last months of the drought year, 2015, is a stately, but intimate, seasonal tome, a celebration of the poignancy and...

Primordial spring is in the air, all is tentative.

Abaton, a sacred place, a sanctuary for dreaming and healing.

Like a memory already gone, this place of life.