Films & Events

Step into the past through the visionary lens of Bill Morrison, Academy Award Nominee and one of cinema’s most innovative artists. This special program presents four of his mesmerizing short films—Release, Who By Water, Buried News, and Incident—each crafted from rare and sometimes deteriorating archival footage. Morrison will be here to answer questions and share insights about the films during the event.

Morrison masterfully recontextualizes historical events, uncovering hidden narratives while breathing new life into forgotten moments. Through striking imagery and evocative soundscapes, his films transform decayed film reels into meditative explorations of time, memory, and the fragility of recorded history.

Join us for this unique screening and a conversation with the filmmaker as he shares insights into his process and the stories buried within the footage.

Films

Release (Dir. Bill Morrison, 13min, 2010)
This short film uses footage from a crowd assembled in 1930 outside Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary to witness Al Capone’s transfer to Chicago, where he would stand trial. Morrison and composer Vijay Iyer worked with a single panning shot, and accompanying soundtrack, to create this film on the nature of spectacle.

Who By Water (Dir. Bill Morrison, 18min, 2007)
Who By Water reedits footages and reconstructs the arrival at land and departure of a ship in the early 20th century. In between the opening and closing of the film, the camera enters the ship in order to portray its passengers, either within group shots or individually. Throughout the film, the various deteriorations of the film celluloid display cracks, marks, and burned holes on the strip and thus on the recorded figures. The decayed matter interplays with the individual figures progressively veiling, distorting, or even discarding them. Thus, it implies an ongoing tension between the evolution of cinematic matter and figurative processes.

Buried News (Dir. Bill Morrison, 12min, 2021)
In 1929, a bank manager in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, buried hundreds of silent film reels in a defunct swimming pool. Forty-nine years later, in 1978, the reels were uncovered by a construction team. Among the 533 reels that were ultimately restored, there were 114 newsreels, each containing five or six individual news stories, each one about a minute in length. Four of these news stories, produced between 1917 and 1920, are included in this short film. Seen together, they reveal how race has historically been used as a tool in the U.S. to divide people for the commercial or political gain of those in power.

Incident (Dir. Bill Morrison, 30min, 2023)
Nominated this year for an Academy Award, Incident uses a composite montage of images from surveillance and security footage as well as police bodycams to provide witness to the killing of Chicago barber Harith “Snoop” Augustus by local police. The film shows its immediate aftermath and consequences, including the cries of an outraged community and the justifications and manipulations of the officer and his abettors.

Other related events:

Bill Morrison and the Moving Image Research Collection

Consider The Source: A Filmmaking Seminar

 

73 min.