Skip to main content
The Ruby is a catalyst for creativity and a home for making art at Duke.
Date & Time
February 3, 2018 at 7:00 pm
Admission
Free; registration required. Register here
Venue
Film Theater at the Rubenstein Arts Center
2020 Campus Drive
Durham, NC 27705
Description

“The films of Nathaniel Dorsky blend a beauteous celebration of the sensual world with a deep sense of introspection and solitude. They are occasions for reflection and meditation, on light, landscape, time and the motions of consciousness. . . Dorsky’s films reveal the mystery behind everyday existence, providing intimations of eternity.”—San Francisco Cinematheque

The Duke University Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts program welcomes visiting artist Nathaniel Dorsky to Duke and Durham in the spring semester of 2018 for four nights of films, February 2-5. Nathaniel Dorsky: 18 at 18 features 18 films from the filmmaker, screened at silent speed, 18 frames per second.

Screening at the Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University, the slate of films spans the filmmaker’s career and includes a new six-film cycle, Garden of Light, photographed at the San Francisco Arboretum in 2017. The Garden of Light cycle will be screened in its entirety as a world premiere.

Program

Song
(2013, 18 min.)
Song was photographed in San Francisco from early October through the winter solstice in late December, 2012.

Sarabande
(2008, 15 min.)
Dark and stately is the warm, graceful tenderness of the Sarabande.

August and After
(2012, 18.5 min.)
After a lifetime, two mutual friends, George Kuchar and Carla Liss, passed away during the same period of time.

Avraham
(2014, 20 min.)
In most of my films I have had the burden of adding a title afterwards. Sometimes the word or words would come automatically, but more often with great difficulty. In the case of Avraham, the title came first. It was not only the film’s inspiration but the very thing that determined every shot and every cut.

About the Artist

Nathaniel Dorsky, born in New York City in 1943, is an experimental filmmaker and film editor who has been making films since 1963. He has lived in San Francisco since 1971. His films have been screened at museums, universities, and festivals around the United States and Europe, and he frequently exhibits new work at the New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde and the Wavelengths program of the Toronto International Film Festival. In the spring of 2012 Dorsky screened films as part of the three month long Whitney Biennial. And in October 2015, the New York Film Festival honored his work with a thirty four film complete retrospective at Lincoln Center. He has received numerous awards and recognitions including a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the LEF Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the California Arts Council.

Kodak Motion Picture Film interviews Nathaniel Dorsky.

Top image: Still from August and After. Images and descriptions courtesy of the artist.

Tune into events & opportunities!

Sign up for our newsletter