For more than six decades, Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler have created extraordinary works which evoke entrancement and fascination. Shortly after they met—at a mid-1960s New York screening of Dorsky’s INGREEN—their lives became inexorably entwined. They relocated together from the opposite coast to the Bay Area in the early-1970s (where they have lived and worked ever-after). Their distinctive filmmaking practices proceeded independently, yet in parallel, with intermittent screenings of their own shorts and others within their respective homes for themselves and, less frequently, a handful of assorted friends. LUMINOUS ALCHEMY, in essence and intention, is inspired by those intimate occasions.

For the uninitiated, the films of Hiler and Dorsky are miniature masterworks of cinematic transmutation, summoning ideal avenues for deep-viewing. Each short, generally twenty minutes or less in duration, is a visual expedition through collocated scenes of intuitive interconnection. The filmmakers both exhibit their work devoid of a soundtrack and at a speed slightly out-of-step with perception, decelerated to eighteen frames-per-second. Therein, their films propose far more than mere representation, constructing a collage of incandescent imagery that transcends the limitations of our perceivable world. Their transcendent work becomes a temporary gateway into an illusory realm.

While their films are often exhibited in individual programs dedicated to either one or the other, this quasi-retrospective intermingles the works of Dorsky and Hiler into five concise programs, each with an interrelated faux-prologue by Sophie Michael (Program I), Margaret Rorison (II), Christopher Harris (III), Maïa Cybelle Carpenter (IV) and Paul Clipson (V).

Twenty-five films in all! Many screening in Seattle for the first—and potentially only—time and nearly all (with one or two exceptions) unavailable online! Each exhibited on the format of its creation: 16mm.