Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives
ILLUMINATED HOURS: THREE EVENINGS WITH NATHANIEL DORSKY AND JEROME HILER
May 17 – May 19
May 17-19, 2024
In conjunction with a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art devoted to the work of both Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, Anthology will welcome the two filmmakers back to the Maya Deren theater – where we’ve presented several memorable programs of their work over the years – for a weekend of rare screenings encompassing Hiler’s 1995 film GLADLY GIVEN, two of Dorsky’s most inspiring works (VARIATIONS and AUGUST AND AFTER), and very special projections of Dorsky’s intimate Kodachrome originals and dailies. These are unique personal prints and spliced camera reversal footage from 1995 through 2006, some of it unedited (the KODACHROME DAILIES) or revisited more than a decade later. Travelogues, portraits of friends, a document of Stan Brakhage a month before his death, and a montage of eleven years of footage – these are unassuming, heartfelt films originally intended for the privacy of the filmmakers’ apartment rather than a public cinema. The blissful warmth of the original Kodachrome stock and Dorsky and Hiler’s delicately precise editing combine to make this an unmissable event!
These screenings coincide with the American release of “Illuminated Hours. The Early Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler”, a publication that brings together texts and images on each filmmaker’s life and work from childhood to the early 2000s, telling the story of half a century of self-discovery and personal and artistic relationships. The book’s editors, Francisco Algarín Navarro and Carlos Saldaña, have guest-curated both this series and the one taking place at the Museum of Modern Art.
“Illuminated Hours” is presented with generous support from NYU KJCC, NYU’s Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, and the Consulate General of Spain in New York.
Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler will be here in person for all three screenings!
The Museum of Modern Art’s film series, “Illuminated Hours: The Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler”, will take place from May 9-16; for more info visit: https://www.moma.org/calendar/film
Dorsky’s work will also be showcased at Peter Blum Gallery (176 Grand St, New York), which will present the exhibition “Arboretum Cycle” from May 1-18. The exhibition features the Arboretum portfolio, which extracts intimate moments of observation from his ARBORETUM CYCLE films, shot between February and December of 2017. For more info visit: https://www.peterblumgallery.com/
PROGRAM 1:
Nathaniel Dorsky
AUGUST AND AFTER
2012, 19 min, 16mm, silent
“After a lifetime, two mutual friends, George Kuchar and Carla Liss, passed away during the same period of time.” –Nathaniel Dorsky
Jerome Hiler
GLADLY GIVEN
1995, 10 min, 16mm, silen
t“Illuminated leaves from the sub rosa oeuvre of Jerome Hiler. Although the title is tinged with irony, this film is in fact a gift and a work of gifted seeing made perceptible. Fragile and challenging in its seeming simplicity, GLADLY GIVEN unfolds and bristles with the delicacy of a Japanese Floating World painting while being gravitationally drawn into the containments and accidents of the everyday.” –Mark McElhatten
Nathaniel Dorsky
VARIATIONS
1992-98, 24 min, 16mm, silent
“VARIATIONS blossomed forth while shooting additional material for TRISTE. What tender chaos, what current of luminous rhymes might cinema reveal unbridled from the daytime word? During the Bronze Age a variety of sanctuaries were built for curative purposes. One of the principal activities was transformative sleep. This montage speaks to that tradition.” –Nathaniel Dorsky
Nathaniel Dorsky
KODACHROME DAILIES FROM THE TIME OF SONG AND SOLITUDE (REEL 1) 2005-2006, 40 min, 16mm, silent
“[KODACHROME DAILIES FROM THE TIME OF SONG AND SOLITUDE, reels 1 & 2] are genuinely one of a kind. There are no prints in distribution. The Kodachrome they were sourced from is still intact but Kodak has terminated the internegative stock that was used at that time to make this work print, and the internegative used for printing them has since been cut up to serve as the printing source for the edited film, SONG AND SOLITUDE (2005-06). What is interesting about these two reels is that it is an unusual opportunity to have the informal pleasure of seeing my footage, not only unedited, but with images that were not selected for the final film and therefore never seen. There is a sense of observing the filmmaker as the observer and therefore participating in the exploration with the camera, somewhat like a painter’s sketchbook or a writer’s notebook.” –Nathaniel Dorsky
Total running time: ca. 100 min.
Fri, May 17 at 7:00.
PROGRAM 2: FIVE KODACHROME ORIGINALS, PART 1
“In the spring of 2016, after editing AUTUMN and THE DREAMER, I began to project my camera original Kodachrome outtakes of footage I had shot while making my Kodachrome films from 1992 through 2009. It was inspiring to come upon this footage from another period of time and to see material that did not fit into my needs of the moment, but in retrospect is very beautiful and well worth working with. There were many different types of material from different projects. Being low on funds, I edited the camera original without a work print and with cement splices. I have decided not to print them. I feel that their charm is in their ephemeral nature as camera original and any attempt to reproduce them only lessens their modest nature. I am hoping there will be situations when I can personally present some of these works publicly. There is of course the danger of them being damaged in projection.Two of the films are personal travel films, LUX PERPETUA I and II, shot in Oaxaca and then in France and Italy. Another is a short portrait of a dear friend and collaborator on Devotional Cinema, Nick Hoff, titled OTHER ARCHER.” –Nathaniel Dorsky
Nathaniel Dorsky LUX PERPETUA I 2000-2002/2016, 23 min, 16mm, silent
Nathaniel Dorsky LUX PERPETUA II 1999-2002/2016, 31 min, 16mm, silent
Nathaniel Dorsky OTHER ARCHER 2003/2016, 9 min, 16mm, silent
Total running time: ca. 70 min.
Sat, May 18 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 3: FIVE KODACHROME ORIGINALS, PART 2
Nathaniel Dorsky
DEATH OF A POET
2003/2016, 21 min, 16mm, silent
“DEATH OF A POET is 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 daughter’s house with Jane (Brakhage) Wodening and her brother, poet, Jack Collom in Boulder. That night it began to snow and like a purification it did not stop for five days.” –Nathaniel Dorsky
Nathaniel Dorsky
OSSUARY
1995-2005/2016, 43 min, 16mm, silent
“OSSUARY is made up of footage from all my films from this period of shooting Kodachrome, 1995 to 2005. An ossuary is a decorative or ceremonial use of human bones dug up after a body decomposes.” –Nathaniel Dorsky
Total running time: ca. 70 min.
Sun, May 19 at 7:30.
