{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}} {{Infobox film | image = 17 Reasons Why screenshot.jpg | caption = A screenshot from the film | director = Nathaniel Dorsky | distributor = Canyon Cinema | released = {{film date|1987|10|6}} | runtime = 19 minutes | country = United States | language = Silent }} '''''17 Reasons Why''''' is a 1987 American avant-garde short film directed by Nathaniel Dorsky. Working with a collection of secondhand portable cameras, Dorsky used the unslit 8 mm footage to create a split screen with four quadrants. Normally screened on 16 mm film at 16 frames per second, it is one of Dorsky's few works to have been shown as a digital transfer.
==Description== ''17 Reasons Why'' is divided into twenty segments, each around one minute long.{{sfn|Marín|2023|pp=179–182}} The content of these segments varies between landscapes, interior scenes, faces, extreme close-ups of objects, and color fields. These are sometimes combined through multiple exposures.<ref name="kleinhans-afterimage"/><ref name="taubin-village-voice"/>
The film divides the screen into four quadrants. The top and bottom images are offset by a single frame.<ref name="kleinhans-afterimage">{{cite magazine |last=Kleinhans |first=Chuck |date=February 1988 |title=Margin notes |magazine=Afterimage |volume=15 |issue=7 |page=21 |doi=10.1525/aft.1988.15.7.21}}</ref> The left and right sides usually use different shots but sometimes show the same image out of sync.<ref name="taubin-village-voice">{{cite news |last=Taubin |first=Amy |author-link=Amy Taubin |date=October 20, 1987 |title=Being Here Now |work=The Village Voice |volume=37 |issue=42 |page=76}}</ref>
==Production== [[File:8mm and double8.png|thumb|Double 8 mm film is made by shooting along each side of a 16 mm film strip and splitting it in half during development. Dorsky used unslit Double 8 to create a 16 mm film with four images per frame.]] The split screen in ''17 Reasons Why'' was produced through Double 8, a technique common within experimental cinema during the 1970s.<ref name="proctor-notebook">{{cite web |url=https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/nathaniel-dorsky-shimmering-golden-music |title=Nathaniel Dorsky: Shimmering Golden Music |last=Proctor |first=Maximilien Luc |date=February 15, 2022 |website=Notebook |access-date=December 16, 2023}}</ref> Double 8 mm film uses a single film strip that is 16 mm wide. Only half the width is exposed at any given time, and the camera operator flips the roll once one side is complete. When the roll is developed, the strip is slit along the center to separate it into two 8 mm strips. To create the quadrisected image, Dorsky created a 16 mm strip from printing the unslit 8 mm strips, such that each 16 mm frame contains four smaller 8 mm frames.<ref>{{cite news |last=Wolff |first=Kurt |date=February 1988 |title=Filming Grains of Sand |work=San Francisco Bay Guardian |page=30}}</ref>{{sfn|MacDonald|2006|p=88}}
Dorsky made the film using old 8 mm cameras he purchased secondhand.<ref name="ahlgren-sf-chronicle">{{cite news |last=Ahlgren |first=Calvin |date=October 4, 1987 |title=Making an Art Form of Chemical Breakdown |work=San Francisco Chronicle |page=37}}</ref> To prevent the two sides of the strip from facing different directions, he held the camera upside down when shooting the second side of each roll.<ref name="proctor-notebook"/> His use of multiple cameras and film stocks produced different colors, textures, and gate shapes in the resulting footage.<ref name="kleinhans-afterimage"/>{{sfn|Sicinski|2010|p=269}} He spliced together twenty rolls of film. Each segment would normally contain around four minutes of footage, but the use of unslit film shortened that to less than one minute, giving the final work a fast tempo unusual in Dorsky's work.{{sfn|Marín|2023|p=179}}<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Nelson |first=Max |date=July 2016 |title=Heavenly Host |url=https://www.filmcomment.com/article/nathaniel-dorsky-heavenly-host/ |magazine=Film Comment |volume=52 |issue=4 |page=53 |access-date=December 16, 2023 }}</ref>
The title ''17 Reasons Why'' comes from a rooftop sign at 17th and Mission Street which appears in the film.{{sfn|Sicinski|2010|p=269}}
==Release== The film premiered on October 6, 1987, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, in a program with ''Pneuma'' and ''Alaya''.<ref name="ahlgren-sf-chronicle"/> It screened on October 20 at the Collective for Living Cinema in New York.<ref name="taubin-village-voice"/> Dorsky requests the film be projected at 16 frames per second, slightly slower than the 18 fps frame rate of his other films or the 24 fps frame rate of typical sound films, to emphasize the articulation of individual frames.<ref name="proctor-notebook"/>
''17 Reasons Why'' is one of few films by Dorsky to have been presented digitally. A 2019 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Private Lives Public Spaces, featured 100 works of "artist's cinema, amateur movies, and family filmmaking". ''17 Reasons Why'' was presented on a digital screen in front of a dark background at the exhibition's entrance, in addition to two 16 mm screenings. MoMA had wanted to show the film as a 16 mm loop, but the wear and tear would have destroyed the print. Dorsky was concerned that rendering the film at 16 frames per second would require the insertion of duplicate frames, which would interfere with its single-frame effects. Upon seeing the installation of the digital version, Dorsky remarked that it "has less feeling of body and light, delicacy of color, and tenderness of fragile beauty" than the film version but that he was "very pleasantly surprised with how good the MoMA technicians made the film look in its own newly acquired digital terms."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6610-archived-and-revived |title=Archived and Revived |last=Hudson |first=David |date=September 27, 2019 |publisher=The Criterion Collection |access-date=December 16, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://nathanieldorsky.net/post/187819079713/17-reasons-why-by-nathaniel-dorsky-is-the |title=17 Reasons Why by Nathaniel Dorsky is the welcoming moving image for MoMA's new installation |last=Dorsky |first=Nathaniel |date=September 22, 2019 |website= |access-date=December 16, 2023}}</ref>
==Reception== Critic Amy Taubin described the film as "lively, glittering, and mysterious", writing that it "has the surprise and resonance of accomplished ensemble jazz improvisation."<ref name="taubin-village-voice"/>
==References== {{reflist}}
==Bibliography== {{refbegin}} * {{cite book |last=MacDonald |first=Scott |author-link=Scott MacDonald (media scholar) |year=2006 |title=A Critical Cinema 5: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-93908-0}} * {{cite book |last=Marín |first=Pablo |editor-last1=Algarín Navarro |editor-first1=Francisco |editor-last2=Saldaña |editor-first2=Carlos |year=2023 |title=Illuminated Hours: The Early Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler |publisher=Asociación Lumière |chapter=Sunset Sucks: Some Reasons for the Beauty of ''17 Reasons Why'' |isbn=978-8-4940-9766-9 }} * {{cite book |last=Sicinski |first=Michael |editor-last1=Anker |editor-first1=Steve |editor-last2=Geritz |editor-first2=Kathy |editor-last3=Seid |editor-first3=Steve |year=2010 |title=Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000 |publisher=University of California Press |chapter=The Bay Area as Cinematic Space in Twenty-five Stops or Less |isbn=978-0-520-24911-0 }} {{refend}}
==External links== * [https://nathanieldorsky.net/post/45104831250/17-reasons-why-photogram-17-reasons-why-nathaniel ''17 Reasons Why''] at Nathaniel Dorsky's official site * [https://canyoncinema.com/catalog/film/?i=799 ''17 Reasons Why''] at Canyon Cinema * {{IMDb title}}
{{Nathaniel Dorsky}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:17 Reasons Why}} Category:1987 films Category:1987 short films Category:1987 American films Category:1980s avant-garde and experimental films Category:American avant-garde and experimental short films Category:American silent short films Category:Films directed by Nathaniel Dorsky Category:Non-narrative films Category:Silent films in color Category:Surviving American silent films