Nathaniel Dorsky writes, “In walking distance from my apartment is San Francisco’s Arboretum located in Golden Gate Park. I decided that I would make a film on a single subject and that subject would be the light—not the objects, but the sacredness of the light itself in this splendid garden. What I did not know is that the great beauty of this magnificent spring would bring forth not one, but seven films, each one immediately following the previous. I began to photograph on the second week of February and finished the editing of the seventh film during the last days of December. These seven films spontaneously manifested as the stages of life: early childhood, youth, maturity, old age, and death.”

Arboretum Cycle consists of the films Elohim (31 mins), Abaton (19 mins), Coda (16 mins), Ode (20 mins), September (20 mins), Monody (16 mins), and Epilogue (15 mins).