Spring (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2013)
The day I traveled to the New York Film Festival was exhausting. My classmates and I rose early in the morning and rushed to the Little Rock airport (cutting it a little too close for comfort in the eyes of our professor eagerly waiting at LIT). We flew to Chicago’s ORD before landing at JFK. Then, as soon as I settled into our hotel it was time to rush to Lincoln Center for my first film of the festival. When I arrived at the theater just in time and dazedly nestled into my seat, instead of catching my breath, I held it.
Worlds Emerging was a retrospective that featured three short films by Nathaniel Dorsky: April (2012), Song (2013), and Spring (2013). The following night I attended The Late Quartet, another program featuring Dorsky’s work (this time Summer”(2013), February (2014), Avraham (2014), and 2014’s December). Dorsky’s avant-garde creations each comprise a string of images with no narrative and no sound. As Dorsky said of The Late Quartet on NYFF’s website, “These films each have a specific subject, though they are not about that subject, but rather of the time of the subject.” This element of time becomes an urgent reality rather than a conceptual framework when it comes to viewing a program of Dorsky’s films. In the theater space, with no sound emanating from the screen, any rustles from the audience were magnified to grotesque proportions. In between each short film—after the screen went black—the audience shifted as one. We uncrossed our legs, adjusted our bulky jackets and damp umbrellas, and simultaneously coughed. Stillness felt required to complement the silence of the films. Only when the spell was broken did I feel a part of the community of spectators.
The acute awareness of the other people in the audience contrasts with the intensely personal experience of viewing Dorsky’s work. The films left ample room for me as a spectator. Sometimes it felt like too much room. I craved more direction; I found my tired mind wandering. At other times the images on screen were thoroughly engaging. The vibrant close-ups of natural settings that characterize Dorksy’s films invite solving. What I thought was a bizarre insect (a caterpillar, maybe? But why is it moving like that?) morphed into a tightly spiraled phone cord right before my eyes. An ebb and flow emerged; I latched on to some images while others passed by without leaving a lasting impression. However, the images I did “solve” (such as the phone cord) have remained ingrained in my memory even months later. The solving I experienced mimics Dorsky’s own process of creation, which relies heavily on experimentation with exposure and different film stocks. He shared with us in the Q+A after The Late Quartet that now that he feels comfortable with color negative it’s time for him to move on. He said that his films are mainly about what film as a medium can do; his work aims to explore cinematic existence. He wants his spectators to discover independently the beauty in his myriad of images.
Avraham (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2014)
After the intoxicating mix of keen attention and mental wandering, I found that the curiosity required to view Dorsky’s films extended to the outside world. On that first night, after leaving the theater, I caught myself looking more closely at my surroundings. My own world emerged as I walked back to our hotel; I noticed reflections in puddles on the sidewalk, and flashes of color in the gray urban landscape. I was at once aware of my professor and fellow classmate walking by my side and my solo experience of seeing. In this way, the short films that make up Worlds Emerging and The Late Quartet are about how to see just as much as they are about what you see. Through his films, Dorsky trained my eyes to zero in, to find meaning in shape and texture and movement.
Author Biography
Dominique Silverman is a senior English-Film Studies major and gender studies minor at Hendrix College. In addition to film she enjoys podcasts, cross stitching, and working towards dismantling patriarchal structures.
Mentor Biography
Kristi McKim is an Associate Professor of English and Chair of Film Studies at Hendrix College, where she was awarded the Charles S. and Lucile Esmon Shivley Odyssey Professorship, honored as the 2014-15 United Methodist Exemplary Professor, and nominated for the CASE U.S. Professors of the Year Award. Her publications include the books Love in the Time of Cinema (2011) and Cinema as Weather: Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change (2013), in addition to pieces in Camera Obscura, Studies in French Cinema, Senses of Cinema, Film International, The Cine-Files, and Film-Philosophy.
Department Overview
Hendrix College offers a major in English with an emphasis in Film Studies and a minor in Film Studies. This growing program within an intimate and rigorous liberal arts college environment includes a variety of courses in the history and theory of film and media, alongside co-curricular experiences (such as this trip to the New York Film Festival) generously made possible through the Hendrix-Odyssey Program. Extracurricular film-related groups include Hendrix Film Society and Hendrix Filmmakers.
Film Details
Worlds Emerging/The Late Quartet (2012-2014)
USA
Director Nathaniel Dorsky
Runtime 68/75 minutes
Follow this link to read the introduction to this set of reviews: https://www.filmmattersmagazine.com/2016/05/21/2015-new-york-film-festival-introduction/
