7:30 p.m.	Devotional Cinema: Films by Dorsky and Ozu

In 2003, Nathaniel Dorsky published Devotional Cinema, a small gem of a book on the pleasures and rewards of a cinema that searches for a purely visual language while still expressing human needs and values. It grew out of a class on avant-garde film he taught at UC Berkeley, and though his discussion ranges across his own avant-garde work, it also touches on films by Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Michelangelo Antonioni, among others. Tonight we present two of Dorsky's recent films, Threnody and Song and Solitude—one made as "an offering to a friend [Stan Brakhage] who died," the other made "with the loving collaboration of Susan Vigil during the last year of her life"—together with an Ozu film of his choosing.


• Threnody (2004, 25 mins @ 18 fps). Song and Solitude (2005–06, 21 mins @ 18 fps). (U.S., Silent, Color, 16mm, PFA Collection)

Followed by:
Late Spring
Yasujiro Ozu (Japan, 1949)

(Banshun). A widowed father believes that his daughter spurns marriage in order to remain with him. He allows her to think that he plans to remarry, though he has no intention of doing so, and she finally accepts an offer of marriage herself. The film must be counted among Ozu's most beloved, a subtly disturbing portrayal of the trap that is love.

• Written by Ozu, Kogo Noda. Photographed by Yuharu Atsuta. With Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara, Yumeji Tsukioka, Haruko Sugimura. (107 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Janus/Criterion Collection)

• (Total running time: 153 mins)