Bill Morrison’s two-hour documentary recollects the unburying of a collection of nitrate film stocks from the early 1900s.
Dawson City: Frozen Time is more than a story of the discovery of 500,000 feet of film buried and forgotten in a town on the Yukon river of Canada. It encompasses the history of film; from the invention of the highly combustible celluloid/nitrate film and its replacement with acetate safety stock in 1949, to the chronicle of the lost footages in Dawson City during the Canadian Gold Rush.
Morrison’s excavated footages accompanied by Alex Somers’s arousing score recreate a past that is nostalgic, haunting, and alluring. The documentary introduces us to the people of this history, from those lost in the stampede during the Gold Rush, to the first settlers of Dawson City. Morrison weaves a story from the lost & found portraits of real people, a story defiant of archetypes. It’s the story of the timelessness of film, the salvaging of the unsalvageable, and the triumph of film preservation.
The documentary is a silent film except in very few occasions; voices are only introduced a total of three or four minutes in the duration of the two hour film. The result is reminiscent of the past that Morrison has reconstructed, the days of silent cinema. Watching Dawson City: Frozen Time feels like sneaking a peek at somebody’s dreams or memories—the blurred images of days gone by is dangerously romantic.
OPENS JUNE 16, 2017
LANDMARK’S NUART THEATRE – LOS ANGELES, CA
GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER – CHICAGO, IL
DIGITAL GYM – SAN DIEGO, CA
