A tale of fire, ice, water, and gold
The world of documentary film has shifted from an occasionally staid form that, for many, was an analogue to journalism, to what it has become today – a malleable form of expression. Documentaries have the power to reveal politics and poetics, personal narratives and global phenomenon, and stories from nature, as well as the Pandora’s box of technology. Documentary films have become the beating heart of the world’s most immediate questions.
Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time opens with a rather traditional genesis story. In the mid1970s, an excavation project was begun in Dawson City to build a new athletic centre. As the back-hoe turned the dirt over, the operator looked down and noticed a large pile of debris. Amongst old pop bottles, chicken wire, and other garbage, he noticed some canisters of film. This moment propels Morrison’s epic piece through its largely un-narrated arc.
We learn that approximately 75 per cent of the world’s silent films have been lost because they were recorded on nitrate film. Nitrate contains many of the same components as gun cotton and, thus, is extremely flammable. As a sad result, film warehouses were frequently wiped out in raging fires. The 533 films discovered in the Dawson City site were silent films preserved because they were buried in permafrost beneath an old building. The story of how they got there and remained in such pristine condition is one of such happenstance and arbitrariness that it is almost unbelievable.
Morrison’s documentary techniques are fascinating. First, except for the beginning and end of the film where there are interviews with the museum staff who assisted in the recovery of these films from the silent era, there is almost no talking. Using photographs from the period, documentary films (some recovered from the Dawson City site), and silent films, he creates a pensive and deeply engaging piece of filmmaking. Alex
Somers (a collaborator of Icelandic band Sigur Ros) has created a quietly pulsing electronic score that threads complex glitch melodic themes with ambient sounds to create one of the most compelling film soundtracks I have ever heard.
We learn about the first strikes of gold, the removal of the native Hanspeaking peoples, and the transformation of a confluence of two rivers into a muddy bonanza city partly through text on the screen, but primarily through the static and moving images that Morrison chooses to build this world. As Dawson City grows, so does the need for entertainment of its inhabitants. The silent films that arrived at Dawson City to be shown at The Orpheum, The Savoy, or The D.A.A.C. were at the end of the line. After being shown, the distributors did not want to pay the freight for their return. So they were stored in the local bank and later in a defunct library. I will leave the story of how they end up in the ground preserved untold because it is such a small instance of historical kismet that it warrants its own revelation.
Morrison’s ability to use historical images and silent film to tell this story allows Dawson City: Frozen Time to transcend what I would consider the traditional boundaries of the documentary genre. His use of photographs, text, and moving images from both newsreels and silent films becomes a commentary on the distinctions that have been traditionally held about “documentary” and “feature” films. Through Morrison’s incredible editing, he is able to use the silent films and their watermarked inconsistencies to point out how these films are as important an element of the story of that time in Dawson City as the more traditional historical documents. The silent films, through reiterative editing of scenes with similar topics and themes, push into the documentary trajectory of the film and become the dancing figure of art on the historical narrative about Dawson City. The silent features and the documentary footage balance the art and beauty of this documentary.
Morrison’s film and its brilliant soundtrack is a cinematic feast that shows how history can be quietly revealed with remarkable power, precision, and grace in documentary film, while still questioning the differences between the “documentary” and “feature” genres it aims to explain.