Nathaniel Dorsky is recognized today as one of the most gifted and influential filmmakers to emerge from the San Francisco experimental film scene. Dorsky's supreme artistry of 16mm cinematography and rhythmic montage has given way to a distinct mode of meditative cinema largely filmed in the streets, always without sound and grounded in a penetrating understanding of film form. In Dorsky's two newest films from 2008, Sarabande and Winter, he continues to discover moments of rare beauty in the quotidian, wordless dramas of light, shadow and color that we, out of habit, would otherwise be blind to.

A professional and much sought after film editor, Dorsky is also a passionate and dedicated cinephile whose unique understanding of cinematic poiesis is wonderfully captured in his published essay Devotional Cinema (2003). For Dorsky's return visit to the HFA, we will complement his newest films with an important earlier work, Alaya (1976-87) and we have assembled a two programs of little known French films of the 1930s, chosen by Dorsky as examples of the narrative cinema that is most important to him. We are pleased and honored that Nathaniel Dorsky will join us for a presentation of his own films and a discussion of rare films by Marcel Carné and Jean Grémillon.