Alaya

United States

1987

28 Min

Color, Black and White

None

Currently 4.5/5 Stars.
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ED Nathaniel Dorsky

Rotterdam (Signals: Dorsky)

Synopsis

Enchanting, minimalist film consisting solely of grains of sand, which act as hyperboles for the constituents of celluloid images: film grain.

Sand, wind, and light intermingle with the emulsions. ‘Alaya manages a perfection of ’musical’ light across a space of time greater in length than would seem possible … and with minimal means of line and tone. … After about three minutes I began to be aware of the subtlety of rhythm, within each shot and shot-to-shot, which carried each cut, causing each new image to sit in-the-light of those several previous … a little sort of a miracle. Bravo!’ –Stan Brakhage

Director

Nathaniel Dorsky

In a way, Nathaniel Dorsky (1943) could be seen as one of the ‘classic’ American avant-garde filmmakers, although he is a relatively late developer within this group.

Dorsky works with great care, filming on 16mm and projecting at 18 frames per second: ‘sacred speed’, as he calls it. He has not used sound since his very first films. The films are screened in silence, to focus all attention on the images: stunningly beautifully shot, silent and striking. The images do not refer to a subject the viewer is expected to recognize but stand completely alone.

Dorsky’s oeuvre consists of twenty short films, each of approx. 10 to 30 minutes. The Toronto film festival recently showed his new, lyrical films Aubade, Compline and Pastourelle (2010) in its Wavelengths programme. In his book, Devotional Cinema, published in 2004, Dorsky explains his vision of the transformative power of watching films, his influences and philosophy, related to Buddhism… read more