One of the revelations of this year's New York Film Festival's Views from the Avant Garde was San Francisco filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky's newest film, the sublime, delicate Arbor Vitae. With the earlier Triste and Variations, Dorsky has created a body of work that establishes him as a master of montage. Exquisite and intense, Dorsky's work has two central preoccupations: the possibilities of silence (and silent "sacred" speed) and the exploration of the screen itself as an energy field. Filming for him is an everyday activity, but the editing of a film takes years. Drawing on his collection of diaristic footage, Dorsky slowly, meticulously shapes his films, bringing together shots that take one's breath away; mysterious, layered images in which recognition is delayed or foregone; and orphan shots-underexposed or overexposed, imperfect yet essential to the whole. Thus, he creates films in which the viewer has a direct connection with the visual, unsupported by language, totally immersed in the present moment, which is cinema.-Kathy Geritz