Bill Morrison: Footprints

Morrison releases primordial film from being material that is destined to decomposition and darkness: in his hands, it transforms to become film as experience once more. Uninterested in restoring images to a pristine state, Morrison is nonetheless invested in restoring images, in various conditions of collapse, to movement and to people. And this is some of the magic of his cinema: that timeless magic of images being animated on a screen before a spectator. – Laura Staab

A film like Beyond Zero: 1914-1918, mainly made up of archival documentary footage from the First World War, presented without any captions or commentary, without the authority of a historian, gives viewers a harrowing sensory experience of the conflict. The monstrous drama stems from the very nature of photo-filmic celluloid, which is both indexical and material: the bodies of the soldiers, of the wounded and of the nurses are deformed, they shake under the filmic damage which looks like bombs raining down, they are riddled with holes, they disappear in decomposing celluloid. This is, quite literally, the last trace they will leave in this world, printed on celluloid, disappearing before our very eyes. – Anne-Violaine Houcke

FILMS
FOOTPRINTS / 1992, 6'
THE FILM OF HER / 1996 / 12'
GHOST TRIP / 2000 / 23'
THE HIGHWATER TRILOGY / 2006 / 31'
PORCH / 2007 / 9'
WHO BY WATER / 2007 / 18'
RELEASE / 2010 / 13'
JUST ANCIENT LOOPS / 2012 / 26'
RE:AWAKENINGS / 2013 / 18'
BEYOND ZERO: 1914-1918 / 2014 / 40'
THE DOCKWORKER’S DREAM / 2015 / 17'
THE LETTER / 2018 / 13'
WILD GIRL / 2021 / 6'
LET ME COME IN / 2021 /11'
HER VIOLET KISS / 2021 / 5'

+ 44-page bilingual FR/EN booklet with texts by Anne-Violaine Houcke, Laura Staab and Steve Dollar

Language(s): English
Subtitles: French