Maine Premiere!
Join us for the Maine premiere of acclaimed experimental filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky’s luminous, silent masterpiece The Arboretum Cycle. Shot in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park Arboretum following a period of rain that ended an extreme drought, these seven films explore shifting patterns of light on plants and the changing seasons, spontaneously manifesting as stages of life. (The Arboretum Cycle will also screen at SPACE Gallery on May 4th.)
Projected on 16mm film, The Arboretum Cycle is a two-hour silent film experience which sought to capture the “sacred light” of the space over one year’s seasons. Spontaneously mimicking the passage of life itself, the series progresses through seven short films shown in succession with only the brief, natural interruptions of changing reels. In order, the films are Elohim, Abaton, Coda, Ode, September, Monody, and Epilogue.
Nathaniel Dorsky is an experimental filmmaker and film editor who has made over 70 films since 1963. Originally from New York, he has lived and worked in California since the 1970s. He is best known for his polyvalent montage films, which utilize a density and fluidity of imagery to unite view and viewer; for Dorsky, the image is “pure character” rather than a symbolic or narrative representation. The silence of the films allows meaning to emerge between viewer and screen without the guiding hand of music or narration. Dorsky strives for a filmic language, a kind of visual sculpture-poetry inseparable from the medium itself.
Duration: 2h 17m
The Arboretum Cycle will also screen at SPACE Gallery on May 4.
This event is co-presented with the Strand by
Points North Institute and Kinonik
