Dawson City: Frozen Time

Dir. Bill Morrison. 2016, 120 mins. Digital projection. With Kathy Jones-Gates, Michael Gates, Sam Kula. Filmmaker Bill Morrison, who works wonders with archival film footage, reveals the bizarre history of Dawson City, a Canadian Gold Rush town where such millionaires as Fred Trump (the President’s grandfather), actor/director William Desmond Taylor, and movie theater mogul Sid Grauman got their start. The remote town was also home to a distribution chain for movies and newsreels in the early 1900s. These films were largely forgotten until uncovered by a bulldozer in 1978. An astonishing meditation on cinema and the modern age, Frozen Time features an enigmatic score by Sigur Rós collaborator Alex Somers, asonishing archival footage, interviews, and historical photographs. Glenn Kenny in The New York Times called it “an instantly recognizable masterpiece,” and said that, “Mr. Morrison constructs his frequently jaw-dropping narrative largely from what is left of that unearthed library.”