Cinema Before 1300

Experimental short subject preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, in 1998.

In the Stone House records and recollects a period of life of four years in rural New Jersey. In the latter 1960s, two young guys with monastic leanings leave the clatter of Manhattan’s art and film scene to catch the wave of higher consciousness that was about to change the world forever to find themselves washed ashore in a place only slightly updated from Way Down East. The monastic retreat quickly turned into the weekend getaway for a host of extravagant Manhattanites seeking films and fun. We learned from hitch-hiking guests that the police referred to our haven as “the stone house.” —Jerome Hiler

Words of Mercury is a silent film projected at 18fps. It has many layers of super-impositions which were all shot in the camera. It moves from a stark wintery world and slowly develops into a place of overgrowth and richness that is almost suffocating and re-invites death.

NEW SHORES is a sister film to IN THE STONE HOUSE in many ways. Like the latter film, it consists of earlier footage edited in recent years. It could be seen as a sequel to IN THE STONE HOUSE especially since it begins with a cross-country journey to the West Coast, where I settled, and concludes with a visit, in 1987, to the “stone house” in rural New Jersey. Even though there is some sort of time line that can be imagined, the film stands on its own. It is simply a series of episodes that touch upon facets of living in a new area with new weather, new people, new identities and stubborn old fears. The Bolex camera goes to work across landscapes and living areas, workplaces and gatherings. A dance of images: can beauty partner with dread and death? It’s a film of the coexistences that percolate beneath the surface of ordinary events. A film of useless hopes and baseless fears.

The recording of the daily events of Dorsky and his partner, artist Jerome Hiler, around Lake Owassa in New Jersey and in Manhattan. The two parts of the films revolve around the four seasons with the first part revolving around spring through summer, while the second part revolves around fall through winter.

“Now that I’m in motion again, I look forward to the passage from this life to future wanderings in unknown places. My film alludes to and appreciates the encounters that flow without ceasing as we move through our personal version of reality” (Jerome Hiler).

“For one thing, this was my first film using negative stock after a lifetime of shooting color reversal. This was a time when I had to open up to a greater freshness of purpose. I had to go forward into the unknown without a plan” (Jerome Hiler).

This film is to be projected at silent speed: 18 frames per second. Although "Marginalia" has no story, it reflects my concern with the feel of society at a time of ecological stress and cultural change. As usual, I have super-impositions which were shot in-camera as well as abrasions on the film surface which reflect the cursive waves of marginal notation and, also, situates hand-writing as a vanishing form of communication.

"A portrait of a young painter, a friend of mine, who I also feature in Marginalia."

“With Bagatelle II, I seem to have come full circle by returning to the so-called polyvalent style of my earliest film endeavors from 50 years ago. The film actually includes material from all the intervening decades. It’s both up to the moment yet life-spanning, with a thread of deep affection for the special characteristics of 16mm film.” —Jerome Hiler

In 1948, a small, struggling, semi-professional orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky began a novel project to commission new works from contemporary composers around the world.

Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the "forest." There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York "underground scene" who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.

“Illuminated leaves from the sub rosa oeuvre of Jerome Hiler. Although the title is tinged with irony, this film is in fact a gift and a work of gifted seeing made perceptible. Fragile and challenging in its seeming simplicity, GLADLY GIVEN unfolds and bristles with the delicacy of a Japanese Floating World painting while being gravitationally drawn into the containments and accidents of the everyday.” –Mark McElhatten

Initially titled "Books for all". A moving institutional commission in which the filmmakers lovingly portray New Jersey's public library system.

Commissioned by Frederick Eberstadt

The seasons are of supreme importance to me, even in the Bay Area. With one exception, all my films follow a pattern of development from a stark "winter" beginning to a rich, flowering or "summer" conclusion. This is true even of the documentaries Music Makes a City and Seasons of a Mountain Vineyard. I always stored my footage of East Coast material according to season