Dawson City: Frozen Time

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Dawson City: Frozen Time
Dawson City film poster.jpg
Film poster
Directed by Bill Morrison
Written byBill Morrison
Produced byBill Morrison
Madeleine Molyneaux
Edited byBill Morrison
Music by Alex Somers
Production
companies
Hypnotic Pictures
Picture Palace Pictures
Distributed by Kino Lorber
Cineteca Bologna
Release date
  • September 5, 2016 (2016-09-05)(Venice)
Running time
120 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$111,619 [1]

Dawson City: Frozen Time is a 2016 American documentary film written, edited, and directed by Bill Morrison, [2] produced by Morrison and Madeleine Molyneaux. [3] First screened in the Orizzonti competition section at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival, [4] the film details the history of the remote Yukon town of Dawson City, from the Klondike Gold Rush to the 1978 Dawson Film Find: a discovery of 533 nitrate reels containing numerous lost films. The recovered silent films, buried beneath a hockey rink in 1929, [5] [6] included shorts, features, and newsreel footage of various events, such as the 1919 World Series. [7]

Contents

Synopsis

The 1978 discovery of 533 reels of nitrate film beneath the permafrost of a decommissioned swimming pool, later known as the Dawson Film Find, serves to frame a narrative of the Canadian gold rush, the dawn of 20th century America, and Hollywood in the silent era.

Contents of the unearthed reels help portray the story of Dawson City: how native lands of the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin became a frontier, a boomtown, and an entertainment hub, before industrial monopolies and poverty of resources ensued. The 1957 documentary City of Gold captured Dawson in the shadow of its former glory.

The film utilizes a number of silent film techniques, consistent with the subject matter, including intertitles in place of voice-over narration, as well as archival sound and a prominent musical score. Brief interviews with those who saved the reels have a more contemporary documentary style. Those sequences include the recounting of the film cache's discovery and how the problem of delivering such chemically volatile objects was handled since commercial delivery services refused to transport the supply to Ottawa and Washington D.C. Ultimately, the Canadian Armed Forces were assigned to transport it south themselves. [8]

Themes

The film begins with a description of the dangers of flammable nitrate film. This offers some insight into the fragility of the cinematic medium, the archive, and perhaps history itself. The story of Dawson City is repeatedly framed in terms of loss, with decay foregrounded by the introduction, the brooding score, and the story itself. The film also focuses on the history of exploitation in Dawson City, implying a parallel between the economic apparatus of the Klondike Gold Rush and that of the motion picture industry. [9]

Production

Bill Morrison had initially envisioned the project to be similar to his 12-minute film The Film of Her (1996), but came to envision a broader scope as time went on. Kathy Jones and Michael Gates, employees of the Dawson Museum and Parks Canada respectively, were two of the early authorities on the Dawson City Film Find. Morrison interviewed both in 2014. Originally he did not intend to include the interview in the final film. [10] Morrison was able to recruit Alex Somers as composer after learning that the band Sigur Ros were fans of his previous film Decasia . [11]

Critical response

Dawson City: Frozen Time has received positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes reports a 100% approval rating based on 62 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.10/10. The site's consensus reads: "Dawson City: Frozen Time takes a patient look at the past through long-lost film footage that reveals much more than glimpses at life through the camera's lens". [12] Dawson City: Frozen Time appeared on more than 100 critics' lists of the best films of 2017, [13] and on numerous lists of the best films of the 2010s, including those from the Associated Press, [14] Los Angeles Times (Kenneth Turan), [15] and Vanity Fair (Richard Lawson). [16] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "If you love film, if you’re intoxicated by the way movies combine image and emotion, be prepared to swoon." [17] Deborah Eisenberg, writing in the New York Review of Books, summarized: "Dawson City: Frozen Time is nominally a documentary—it is a documentary—but describing it as a documentary is something like describing Ulysses as a travel guide to Dublin. The film is transfixing, an utterly singular compound of the bizarre, the richly informative, the thrilling, the horrifying, the goofy, the tragic, and the flat-out gorgeous." [18] Glenn Kenny of The New York Times praised the film "as an instantaneously recognizable masterpiece." [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silent film</span> Film with no synchronized recorded dialogue

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound. Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of inter-title cards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Klondike Gold Rush</span> 1896–1899 migration to Yukon, Canada

The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of Yukon, in north-western Canada, between 1896 and 1899. Gold was discovered there by local miners on August 16, 1896; when news reached Seattle and San Francisco the following year, it triggered a stampede of prospectors. Some became wealthy, but the majority went in vain. It has been immortalized in films, literature, and photographs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Film preservation</span> Historic preservation of motion pictures

Film preservation, or film restoration, describes a series of ongoing efforts among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images they contain. In the widest sense, preservation assures that a movie will continue to exist in as close to its original form as possible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dawson City</span> City in Yukon, Canada

Dawson City, officially the City of Dawson, is a city in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–1899). Its population was 1,577 as of the 2021 census, making it the second-largest city in Yukon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dempster Highway</span> Highway in Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories, Canada

The Dempster Highway, also referred to as Yukon Highway 5 and Northwest Territories Highway 8, is a highway in Canada that connects the Klondike Highway in Yukon to Inuvik, Northwest Territories on the Mackenzie River delta. The highway crosses the Peel and the Mackenzie rivers using a combination of seasonal ferry services and ice bridges. Year-round road access from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk opened in November 2017, with the completion of the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway, creating the first all-weather road route connecting the Canadian road network with the Arctic Ocean.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lost film</span> Feature or short film that is no longer known to exist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth Turan</span> American film critic

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Bill Morrison is an American, New York–based filmmaker and artist. His films often combine rare archival material set to contemporary music, and have been screened in theaters, cinemas, museums, galleries, and concert halls around the world.

<i>Gold Rush</i> (TV series) American reality television series

Gold Rush is a reality television series that airs on Discovery and its affiliates worldwide. The series follows the placer gold mining efforts of various family-run mining companies, mostly in the Klondike region of Dawson City, Yukon, Canada, as well as in the U.S. state of Alaska. In its 12th season as of early 2021, prior seasons also included mining efforts in South America and western North America.

The Klondike Gold Rush is commemorated through film, literature, historical parks etc.

<i>Frozen Justice</i> 1929 film

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<i>Klondike</i> (miniseries) 2014 television miniseries

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The Girl of the Northern Woods is a 1910 American silent short drama produced by the Thanhouser Company. The film is a drama that follows Lucy Dane and Will Harding and a jealous halfbreed trapper named José. Considering Will his rival, José attempts to ambush Will, but instead shoots Will's assistant. José then blames Will for the deed and Will is bound by a lynch mob and set to be executed. Lucy frees Will and sends the lynch mob away, but José encounters Will and the two fight. José is wounded and falls over a cliff, but Will is recaptured by the mob. From the bottom of the cliff, José calls out for help and Lucy responds to him. José confesses his crime to Lucy and she rushes to Will and prevents his execution. The film was directed by Barry O'Neil and was released on June 3, 1910. An incomplete print of the film survives in the Library of Congress after its rediscovery in 1978 as part of the Dawson Film Find.

Saving Brinton is a 2017 American documentary film about the efforts of Iowa resident Mike Zahs to preserve a large quantity of reels of film from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that he found in the basement of a farm house. It premiered at AFI Docs on June 17, 2017 and internationally at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post calls it one of 2018's "best movies of the year". It was directed by Tommy Haines and Andrew Sherburne.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dawson Film Find</span> 1978 discovery of 533 silent-era films

The Dawson Film Find (DFF) was the accidental discovery in 1978 of 372 film titles preserved in 533 reels of silent-era nitrate films in the Klondike Gold Rush town of Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. The reels had been buried under an abandoned hockey rink in 1929 and included lost films of feature movies and newsreels. A construction excavation inadvertently uncovered the forgotten cache of discarded films, which were unintentionally preserved by the permafrost.

<i>The Unattainable</i> 1916 drama film directed by Lloyd B. Carleton

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References

  1. ↑ "Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016)". Box Office Mojo . Internet Movie Database . Retrieved August 28, 2017.
  2. ↑ "Dawson City: Frozen Time". Picture Palace Pictures. September 19, 2016. Archived from the original on October 8, 2014. Retrieved September 19, 2016.
  3. ↑ TCM.com
  4. ↑ "La Biennale di Venezia - Orizzonti". Archived from the original on October 4, 2016. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  5. ↑ Weschler, Lawrence (September 14, 2016). "The Discovery, and Remarkable Recovery, of the King Tut's Tomb of Silent-Era Cinema". Vanity Fair. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  6. ↑ "Lost and Found no. 2 – Dawson City". The Bioscope. September 19, 2016. Retrieved September 19, 2016.
  7. ↑ "Footage of scandalous 1919 World Series saved by Yukon permafrost". CBC News. September 19, 2016. Retrieved September 19, 2016.
  8. ↑ Morrison, Bill (2016). Dawson City: Frozen Time. KinoLorber. p. 1:53:45.
  9. ↑ The Filmmaker as Miner: An Interview with Bill Morrison on JSTOR (Bill Morrison and Scott MacDonald Cinéaste Vol. 42, No. 1 (Winter 2016), pp. 40-43)
  10. ↑ The Filmmaker as Miner: An Interview with Bill Morrison on JSTOR (Bill Morrison and Scott MacDonald Cinéaste Vol. 42, No. 1 (Winter 2016), pp. 40-43)
  11. ↑ The Filmmaker as Miner: An Interview with Bill Morrison on JSTOR (Bill Morrison and Scott MacDonald Cinéaste Vol. 42, No. 1 (Winter 2016), pp. 40-43)
  12. ↑ "Dawson City: Frozen Time". Rotten Tomatoes. January 21, 2023.
  13. ↑ "Dawson City: Frozen Time awards and year-end lists". Hypnotic Pictures. December 31, 2019.
  14. ↑ Coyle, Jake (December 13, 2017). "'Tree of Life' tops AP's best 10 films of the decade". Associated Press.
  15. ↑ Turan, Kenneth (December 30, 2017). "The best movies of the decade: Kenneth Turan and Justin Chang's essential picks". Los Angeles Times .
  16. ↑ Lawson, Richard (November 26, 2017). "The 10 Best Movies of the 2010s: Richard Lawson's List". Vanity Fair.
  17. ↑ Turan, Kenneth (June 15, 2017). "'Dawson City: Frozen Time' details the astonishing discovery of a treasure-trove of forgotten film". Los Angeles Times .
  18. ↑ Eisenberg, Deborah (August 16, 2018). "After the Gold Rush". New York Review of Books. ISSN   0028-7504 . Retrieved October 4, 2019.
  19. ↑ Kenny, Glenn (June 8, 2017). "In 'Dawson City: Frozen Time,' Early Movies Lost and Found". The New York Times .
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