Dawson City: Frozen Time (Morrison, 2017): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.15pm
Chicago Reader review:
Bill Morrison, whose extraordinary documentary Decasia (2002)
turned decomposing film stock into the stuff of avante-garde reverie,
returns with another staggering journey into the past. In 1978 a
construction crew in Dawson City, Yukon, uncovered hundreds of reels of
silent film that were used as landfill after a local theater switched
over to talkies in the 1930s. Drawing on these materials as well as
archival photos and other movie clips, Morrison reconstructs the history
of the frontier town from its gold-rush heyday to the present, even as
he connects it to the emergence of the American cinema. The movie honors
the silent-film aesthetic with a majestic score and the narration in
onscreen titles, though composer Alex Somers cuts loose with a little
electronic noise whenever Morrison presents one of his abstract studies
in peeling emulsion. Included is rare footage of the Chicago “Black Sox”
playing the infamous 1919 World Series.
JR Jones
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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