This mini-documentary produced by Filmstruck focuses on the artistry of director Bill Morrison, who leverages decaying film stock from years past to tell new stories that are relevant to today's audiences. The decaying film lends brilliant visuals which add to Morrison's concept of storytelling.

"As haunting a film as there was this decade, Bill Morrison’s painstakingly stitched-together collage of old movie footage pulls us into a semi-distant past full of forgotten life. Dawson City: Frozen Time is, most literally, a documentary about the discovery of over 500 silent-film reels buried in a former gold rush town in the Yukon. In showing us clips of these lost movies, all about 100 years old, Morrison also tells the story of Dawson City, a boom town alive with want and opportunity, the locus of a human surge that was at once prodigious and ruinous. Zooming even further out, Dawson City: Frozen Time talks keenly—if not directly—about what it is to be people among one another, to strive for success in collaboration and competition, to seek out shared entertainment and diversion from the lonely harshness of life in the world. Basically, Morrison’s film captures the human experience through images of humans captured on film a century ago. It’s a lyrical movie, a mesmerizing glimpse into the past. There’s also something scary about Dawson City: Frozen Time, in all its reminding that the scramble and noise of our times—as advanced and busy as any have ever been—will one day disappear into their own kind of silence. Overlooked upon its release (by myself included), Dawson City: Frozen Time deserves an unearthing."

- Richard Lawson, chief film critic, Vanity Fair

"Dawson City: Frozen Time"
(2016, 120 min)

World premiere in the Orizzonti section of the 73rd Venice International Film Festival

August 31 - September 10, 2016

Written, directed, and edited by
Bill Morrison

Music by
Alex Somers

Produced by
Madeleine Molyneaux and Bill Morrison

Associate producer
Paul Gordon

At the 2016 commencement on May 24, three alumni will receive a President's Citation, an honor not bestowed for several years. Awarded to alumni who have made important contributions to art, architecture, engineering or interdisciplinary studies, this year's recipients will be Bill Morrison A'89, John Leeper AR'85, and Jason Banfelder ChE'93 & MChE'96.

On the film archaeologist whose presentation of history celebrates decay and disintegration.

Cinematographer John Bailey discusses "Light Is Calling" in his ASC blog.