Bill Morrison
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Reel to Reel: Is “Content” So Different From Edison’s Early Cinema?
The churn is relentless. The demand, insatiable. The output, rushed and raw but undeniably compelling. Working with cutting-edge communications devices, a rotating cast of tinkerers comes together each day to produce new pieces of short-form visual entertainment, racing to keep up with an attention economy that demands new thrills, new sensations, new captured moments that, often enough, go on to permeate the wider culture. Sometimes, these snippets of footage simply isolate and examine something universal from real life; other times, they tell a story. Naturally, there are collaborations with commercial interests and guest appearances from celebrities hoping for a quick […]
by Jordan Hoffman on Apr 27, 2026 -
Explosive Memories: Five Questions for Dawson City: Frozen Time Director Bill Morrison
The poetics of decomposition are the haunting, thrilling and, in the case of his latest feature, Dawson City: Frozen Time, historically revelatory stuff of the cinema of Bill Morrison. In varying degrees and across films like The Miner’s Hymn, The Great Flood and Decasia — the latter dubbed “the best film ever made” by Errol Morris — Morrison has made the excavation of lost cinematic images both an informative and sensory-impactful experience. In the new Dawson City: Frozen Time, Morrison both dramatizes and draws upon the discovery of over 500 silent era films found iced and buried in a swimming […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2017 -
Bill Morrison Hands You the Remote
Bill Morrison’s newest film The Shooting Gallery has just finished playing a mere handful of screenings at the BAM Fisher Fishman Space as part of the 30th Next Wave Festival. It represents a new step in Morrison’s oeuvre because it introduces—as far as I’m aware—the concept of interactivity into his work, with audience members each receiving a laser pointer which they used as a remote control to select video and audio clips throughout the screening. The result—with music by Richard Einhorn, design by Jim Findlay, and interactive programming by Ryan Holsopple—is vintage Morrison but also something completely new. Morrison is […]
by Randy Astle on Nov 11, 2012
