Aug 14, 2024
Jerome Hiler
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Nicaragua
seen from Kenya
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Philippines
seen from Türkiye
seen from Romania
seen from Türkiye
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from Netherlands
Jerome Hiler
Hours for Jerome (1982)
Stan Brakhage, January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003.
With Jerome Hiler, Nathaniel Dorsky, and Anne Waldman in 1998.
3 Films by Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler | Outdoor Screening, Fri, 21 May 2021, Leeds, U.K.
Pavilion, in partnership with Hyde Park Picture House and Meanwood Valley Urban Farm, are happy to present a small-scale outdoor screening of three silent 16mm films by American artists Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler.
Films: all 16mm / silent / 18 fps
The Dreamer (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2016, 19 min) Temple Sleep (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2020, 18 min) Words of Mercury (Jerome Hiler, 2011, 25 min)
The screening will take place in an unsheltered, working field at the farm. The ground is uneven and the event will run at night when it will be dark but volunteers will help with lighting as you move across the site! We are unable to provide seating and advise you dress warmly and bring something waterproof to sit on, as well as a torch.
Since meeting at a New York City screening in 1964, Dorsky and Hiler have been lifelong partners and the principal inspiration for each other’s films. Working with hand-held 16mm cameras, each creates a silent cinema that is at once exquisitely beautiful, meticulously crafted and deeply personal. A master of colour, restraint and montage, Dorsky gathers the images for his films in locations close to his home in San Francisco, piecing them together like words in a poem. Hiler, whose practice also includes painting and stained glass, focuses on pastoral subjects, modulating rhythm and light by layering images and using filters and other methods of hand manipulation.
Venue and Time Meanwood Valley Urban Farm Sugarwell Road Leeds, LS7 2QG
Arrival from 9.15pm for 9.50pm start. Ends: 11pm. Specially prepared film notes will be emailed in advance to those that book, as well as printed. Booking Book here Pay what you can (you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can). Strictly advanced bookings only. Practicalities Detailed information on access and Covid safety measures will be emailed to all ticket holders 48-hours before the event. In the event of adverse weather the screening will be rescheduled for a new date and your booking will remain valid. If we do need to postpone, you will be notified by email by lunchtime on 21 May.
For access questions please email [email protected]. tickets via hydeparkpicturehouse link Pavilion website link
Please find attached link for accompanying interview session link
Interview with Jerome Hiler and Nathaniel Dorsky, May 2021, Leeds, U.K. to accompany an outdoor screening hosted by Will Rose
WR The screening of your work in Leeds will be outdoors in a field at Meanwood Valley Urban Farm. It will be dark of course, but the films will be set against the backdrop of the city and accompanied by the sound of the outdoor environment. I’m interested in how these local conditions might affect your work. What do you think about this, and have you ever screened your work outdoors?
ND When Jerome and I were in our early twenties we would leave New York City for a summer evening at my parents’ house where there was a backyard bordering a forest. We would have outdoor screenings using two projectors and enjoy the superimposed images and their many chance occurrences. San Francisco does not have windless warm evenings and the summer nights are particularly cold, so the inspiration to do this type of screening does not come naturally. But this summer, with the Covid crises restricting our social and screening lives, we had two screenings for six people each on the backyard patio of filmmaker Scott Stark. We were all dressed for a winter sleigh ride and masked with distance between seating. I showed three films I had made so far during the lockdown, one of which, Temple Sleep, you will see this evening. What was particularly lovely were the swaying tree shadows on the screen from the surrounding window lights going off and on. The film felt like it was floating within a larger cinema.
JH Of course, silent films are extremely vulnerable to ambiance, yet there are always margins, and some are larger or smaller so it’s impossible to predict what is too distracting or not. Every screening is a law unto itself. No two are alike – even when there’s an immediate repeat screening. When I send my films out to be rented, they’re like children old enough to be on their own. I wish them luck. That’s about all I can do. Back in 1964 I roomed with Gregory Markopoulos and we were always trying to find some spacious outdoor setting for a night time screening. It never came about, but I feel now that I saw the beginning of an idea that eventually led to his Temenos events in Greece.[1]
WR You have each largely kept your personal filmmaking practice separate from your ‘day jobs’ (Jerome as a carpenter and documentary director, Nathaniel as a film editor) – to what extent did/does your daily work influence or affect the films you make, and vice versa?
ND As an editor one has to be very strict sometimes with a client for their own good … you witness the naked self-deceptions … so when you are working on your own film you almost laugh when this dialogue takes place all within yourself … you see the importance of not deceiving yourself … you see the way you fib to yourself …
JH It has been some time since I worked as a carpenter. The work was all-engrossing and I hardly had a chance to have my films affect that particular work. However, the money I made certainly allowed me to make films. When I was young, I admired the filmmakers who had day jobs that supported their work. I also worked on documentary films and there it was a case of my personal films influencing my documentary style.
WR Your work is very much concerned with the act of filming in the moment – an idea which also seems to extend to the way you would like your films to be experienced. I’m curious about the role history and memory play into this presentness. When you film somewhere, is the history of that place important to you? And are your own memories of that place important to the way you respond to it in the moment with your camera?
ND For me it is the presences and dissonances of light that guide my camera into the world. Generally I am not trying to evoke a place, but in the film Temple Sleep I shifted in that direction; in this case seeing a series of fly casting practice pools as the flooded ruin of an ancient temple of the past.
JH I generally wander at random. Driving in my car – particularly in places that I don’t know, hoping to get lost. I will react to a location. I don’t set out to make a statement, rather I learn and am tutored by the film as it develops. My film has more to say to me in the long run than the reverse. All art works seem to be self-portraits.
WR I understand that you often show your work to friends in private salon screenings. Until relatively recently this was the only situation that Jerome’s work would be presented in. Can you tell me more about these private screenings? And when you make your work, is it is useful to have a particular viewer (someone you know) in mind?
JH Now that I’m shown publicly, I’m often asked why I “withheld” my work. But, as far as I was concerned, I was sharing my work as much as I could. Living in San Francisco, I was ensconced in such a vibrant and busy film scene with many visiting filmmakers coming through and showing their work. There were many impromptu screenings at different people’s homes. For my part, I would create tailor-made “films” from my camera original to suit the person or people who were attending that night. Then, I would dismantle the reel and re-purpose material for another occasion. This process of using original film resulted in much loss over the years. But, as for making a finished film, I had not found a voice and my attempts, I feared, might be pretentious. Suddenly, I was asked to be in a film show and I quickly finished a film in progress. In this way, I had found my very casual voice.
WR You have been life-partners since the mid-1960s and make films principally for each other. Can you tell me more about how your work converges and diverges?
ND Jerome taught me half the things that I know. His earliest filmmaking awakened me to the open glories of self-symbol montage, that a film is something in itself! Jerome is a bit more the painter and I, a bit more the poet.
WR During the pandemic I have increasingly had the urge to be somewhere that I don’t recognise. I was fascinated to find out that your work is almost entirely filmed within a very small radius of your home in San Francisco. Why is this the case?
ND This is an exaggeration … although it is true that many of my films are shot in walking distance from my apartment. But I would often in normal times go downtown with my camera in a car, park and walk around in a variety of neighbourhoods and environments. I could no longer shoot street or human scenes as if the Covid was not happening. The real issue is that when you travel and shoot footage the footage is seldom as good as something you shot that you are very familiar with. When it’s familiar you have to work harder to make it touch something in the psyche … but a new place is all awe and seduction of the new but the footage one might take there is often not really so interesting as cinema. I have some travel films I’ve made on Kodachrome and have occasionally shown them in my apartment and once publicly at Anthology Film Archives. They looked gorgeous with the original camera Kodachrome going through the projector – now that is a heart stopper.
WR You both have a close affinity to poetry and have found ways to create an equivalent sensation using the medium of film. Nathaniel, I showed your work in Leeds a few years ago in the presence of a very wonderful local poet. Without any prior knowledge, he appreciated it instantly as the filmic equivalent of a poem. Is there some intrinsic essence you can identify which makes film poetic?
ND When film can create for the viewer feelings and intuitions, associations and discoveries, things that cannot be directly said, then it has poetic qualities. Not the false poetry of sentimental narrative, but the sharp present alert quality of light and the screen. JH I think my films are more akin to music than poetry. Some musicians can tell me what tempos and dance forms my works employ. My subject matter is so truly personal that I doubt anyone else could follow a “narrative.” Though, I have heard a viewer’s re-telling of my film that was both true and sidesplittingly hilarious. You might wonder, “Do I have no regard for my viewer?” Actually, I hope that there is always something for the mind of the viewer to engage with along with the feeling that what you see and feel is, indeed, the heart of the film. The film is really yours. I remember, over so many years, tedious post-film discussions where a viewer stated their reaction and asked the filmmaker, “Was that intentional?” My answer would be: If that’s what you saw, yes, it was.
WR The way light, weather and vegetation are measures of seasonal change is important in almost all your work. How do the seasons play a role in structuring the way you make films?
ND Like poets for many thousands of years, the change of seasons stirs the soul, awakening primordial feelings of birth, death and desire and the need to “sing” of such things.
WR The pandemic has put a temporary stop to public screenings of work that necessitates film projection. This screening of your work in Leeds is a gentle re-connection with a type of art that has been in hibernation. What has been your response to the last year? Have you worried for the future of your art form?
ND I just kept on shooting and vaguely wondering what damage the Covid crises would have on handmade films in public arenas. Luckily my film lab was allowed to stay open as an essential business … I could not agree more … and Eastman stayed open for purchasing raw stock. I found it very difficult to make a film during this crises – though I ended up making six … many quite short as the world had become smaller. I spent weeks at various places in Golden Gate park, a half block from my apartment. After three weeks or so ideas for making films in those locations took place and manifested. It was hard photographing things with this ominous lurking presence, but I found a way by relating to the oppression and trying to make films that were a purification for the impending claustrophobia.
JH This is a very good question. The issue of impermanence has arisen most powerfully this past year. I find myself at an advanced age. I read complaints that my films are impossible to see outside of the larger venues in film capitals. My attention, as usual, has been on the making of films and not at all on their exhibition. I have never felt that video was akin to film. For me, it did not present itself as a substitute. I am considering, very seriously, transferring my films to a digital format. I do dislike the light of digital projectors, but I have to face the fact that loyalty to my first love is taking too large a toll on my work’s appearance on any screen at all.
[1]. Temenos is the name filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos gave to a remote outdoor screening site in the Peloponnese region of Greece. Markopoulos spent the last decade of his life working on Eniaios, an epic, 80-hour film cycle created exclusively for projection at this site. The next presentation screening will take place there in summer 2022. See: www.thetemenos.org
3 Films by Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler | Outdoor Screening, Fri, 21 May 2021, Leeds, U.K. link
Maximilien Luc Proctor writes and interviews Nathaniel Dorsky about his film shows in Croatia and Frankfurt this past year
Maximilien is the editor in chief of Ultra Dogme, a film and musical blog, where this article originally appeared under the title, "There is magic to be found in everything”, Looking at the films of Nathaniel Dorsky.
photo by Verena Baumann
link to Ultra Dogme article link to the Ultra Dogme blog
Max Goldberg writes in the Brooklyn Rail about Jerome Hiler’s autobiographical films
The Article Once More to The Lake was published in September 2015.
Jerome Hiler has made two films covering two periods in his earlier life. In the Stone House is of the same time as Nathaniel’s Hours for Jerome, and New Shores concerns the first decades after moving from the New Jersey countryside to San Francisco. Max Goldberg has previously published an interview with Jerome in Cinema Scope Magazine, an article also available as a pdf through his blog In the grain, with the title of Return to Form.
Jerome Hiler shooting Words of Mercury
Max Goldberg in Nathaniel Dorsky’s apartment
Distribution The films by Jerome Hiler’s are available for renting
Canyon Cinema
Bagatelle II (2016), Marginalia (2016), In the Stone House (2012), Words of Mercury (2011) and New Shores (1971-87)
Lightcone in Paris
Bagatelle II (2016), Marginalia (2016), In the Stone House (2012), Words of Mercury (2011) and New Shores (1971-87)
New Shores
link Brooklyn Rail Once More to The Lake link In the grain pdf Return to Form
Dorsky and Hiler will have a total of four film shows this coming August at the Pacific Film Archive
Nathaniel Dorsky & Jerome Hiler: Film Offerings
August 14–29, 2026 Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler have lived in the Bay Area since 1971, relocating here from New York City and its environs. Their lives are intertwined as filmmakers, life partners, and lovers of art, poetry, and the natural world. One of their favorite haunts is BAMPFA, where they have attended countless programs as devoted members of our audience.
Both Dorsky and Hiler are articulate about their approach to filmmaking, sharing what motivates each project and, in turn, how their view of life and the world have grown. Hours for Jerome, Parts 1 & 2, filmed between 1966 and 1970, is a beautiful portrait of their lives together on the East Coast. The second program, a selection of five lyrical films by Dorsky, includes Alaya, a meditation on landscape with an uncanny sense of scale, from the particulate to infinite space. Hiler will share four works distinguished by his interest in color and philosophical musings, including his pivotal Words of Mercury and his most recent film, Careless Passage. The series concludes with Dorsky’s monumental Arboretum Cycle, seven exquisite works filmed in Golden Gate Park and edited within the course of one year.
BAMPFA is proud to represent both Dorsky and Hiler as their archive of record; each filmmaker has entrusted our institution with the long-term care and preservation of their films. This series offers a wonderful occasion to share some of the gems from the BAMPFA collection. Susan Oxtoby, Director of Film and Senior Film Curator
View complete program details about the series Nathaniel Dorsky & Jerome Hiler: Film Offerings
For further information about each program, including film titles and detailed notes, please refer to the following links:
Hours for Jerome, Parts 1 & 2 Friday, August 14, 2026 7 PM (70 mins) BAMPFA Full program notes and ticket information Hours for Jerome, Parts 1 & 2
Five Films by Nathaniel Dorsky Sunday, August 16, 2026 1:30 PM (111 mins) BAMPFA Full program notes and ticket information Five Films by Nathaniel Dorsky
Four Films by Jerome Hiler Friday, August 21, 2026 7 PM (72 mins) BAMPFA Full program notes and ticket information Four Films by Jerome Hiler
Arboretum Cycle Saturday, August 29, 2026 3 PM (137 mins) BAMPFA Full program notes and ticket information Arboretum Cycle
Location The BAMPFA cinema entry is located at 2155 Center Street, Berkeley, CA 94720