Dawson City: Frozen Time

If you like this sort of thing... Photographs and snippets of film from the late 1890s lead to a wonderful series of films of very tough/hard people who encountered their own Bitcoin bubble in the shape of the Klondike gold rush. And there are some very interesting names in the history of this little gold rush town. It's a matter of taste but I am fascinated by films of long dead people who once thought they were at the forefront of civilization. Old time photos are good for imaginings, but films of people going about their business causes a lot more 'connectedness' between the viewer and the subjects. "I know someone who acts just like that!" We are presented with photos and film footage that makes one think "Deadwood" probably wasn't really such an exaggeration.

At first, I thought this was an okay film.10 minutes later I thought it was very good. 10 minutes after that, I realized it was excellent. The pace is slow, deliberate, and has more than its share of "Holy cow!" moments. Be patient as there's a huge story that needs to be told and it has a cast of thousands. Using old movie footage (from films both preserved in Hollywood and "found" in Dawson City) and interviews with some of the people "who were there", Bill Morrison has crafted a big story of a small town in a very big world with history playing out all around it.

An extraordinary piece of documentary film-making. Bravo!

This is a fascinating documentary that weaves together the story of the Klondike gold rush, the early history of silent cinema, the flammability of early celluloid film spools, and the mystery of the excavation of old reels in the site of a buried former swimming pool in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. Dawson was the end of the line for hundreds of silent films that crossed North America. Once they were shown in the local theater, they just piled up in warehouses in Dawson. Most canisters were thrown in the river or burned in fires, but some got buried and miraculously preserved in an oxygen-free environment and were able to restored. Bill Morrison, who spent years painstakingly putting this film together made some key choices: he showed pieces of over 100 long-lost films, mostly without narration but with captions identifying each film and its year, along with a haunting soundtrack by musicians from the Icelandic band, Sigur Rós. The clips from the 1919 "Black Sox" World Series were especially interesting to me.

I had the opportunity to see the film at the National Gallery of Art, and Mr. Morrison was there to answer questions. He mentioned that in the cache that was unearthed there were pieces of over 500 films, although no full-length feature films. (Who knew there were that many silent films in circulation?) He said he chose to eschew narration, because, after all, these were silent films. Someone in the audience asked him if he had heard of a similar cache more recently found in New Zealand. He said he had, and explained that New Zealand was similar in that it was a terminus point in the globe for such movies as well. Thanks to Mr Morrison, and a little luck, this history has not been lost forever.

A documentary that tries to do just a little too much. The story itself is fascinating - the discovery in 1978 of a trove of lost silent films preserved in the permafrost of Dawson City, Canada. To me, the 'star of the show' in the documentary needs to be the films, and I would have liked the focus to be there, after an introductory explanation of context. Instead, director Bill Morrison rewinds us all the way back through the history of Dawson, from its founding, the Yukon gold rush, and the subsequent changes to the town over the years. He also takes us through various news stories and social movements from the 1910's and 1920's, as they relate to footage that was discovered.

I like history and some of this was interesting to me, and at its best he matches photos to footage (for example, a socialist agitator being deported back to Russia). At its worst he gets into minutiae of Dawson's history, and instead of just showing some number of the silent films fragments themselves with explanation of the actors, attempts to match footage to what people in the present are talking about. For example, one of the discoverers of the trove says he had to call someone up to come have a look at it, so as he's describing that, we see footage of someone on the phone in an old movie. The background music is awfully eerie and odd in places too. It was interesting enough to watch and a lot of research and care went into the production, so depending on your interests, you may like it better.

Bill Morrison, the director and writer of Dawson City Frozen Time, is my new hero. Through an odd set of circumstances he landed at the National Archives in Canada and learned about the stash of silent films discovered as part of a landfill site in the Yukon. Early films were made on highly flammable celluloid, and in a new industry (the first film was in 1895 in France) creating an archive was definitely not considered. So, discovering over 500 "lost" silent films from the early 1900's was like discovering gold all over again. (A gold rush was how the city of Dawson initially came into being !!) Mr. Morrison has woven together the story of silent film, the Klondike gold rush and the creation of a city. If you have the opportunity to see this film, please do so. I expect it is going to win a few awards !!