[1][2] Dorsky made a series of personal, autobiographical films in New York during the 1960s before shifting his focus toward nature and the world around him.
[2] The film's ending originated with an old roll of Ansco 400 stock Dorsky had bought in a camera store in Los Angeles.
[2] The film's title refers to the Stoic concept of pneuma, establishing a parallel between the soul and the photographic development process.
[5] Pneuma premiered at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive on June 7, 1983, in a program with Hours for Jerome and Ariel.
[7] In Afterimage, Chuck Kleinhans questioned if a viewer could "remain aesthetically engaged with a work that goes on for a long time with minimal change or difference".