UnArchive // Expanded

DECAY DANCE

Bill Morrison / USA / 2013-2023 / 50′ loop program


This program, consists of four short films and five interstitial dance loops .
It begins with the Edenic Light Loop, and continues with various tales of discovery and betrayal, each separated by, or including a dance. It concludes with a sort of epiphany with Chrysalis, itself a mirrored dance, which lends itself to the rebirth of subsequent looping programs.
The figures in each film move through the space and narrative threads repres ented on film . They also appear and disappear through the layers of emulsion and celluloid decay that have occurred since they first performed for the camera and were printed on film. In this way their stage is the frame, and they (and we) are all dancing through both space and time.

Bill Morrison, 2023

may 3 – 8
10:00 am. – 6:00 pm.
Real Academia de España en Roma
Tempietto del Bramante

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Light Loop
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Archive Light is Calling (Bill Morrison, 2004); The Bells (James Young, 1926)

Her Violet Kiss
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Decay Dance
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Archive Unknown

The Letter
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Archive (Edward Sloman, 1922); Golden Shackles (Dallas M. Fitzgerald, 1928); La Bouquetière De Montmartre (Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, 1913); The Bread of the People (Unknown, 1913); The Intrigue (Frank Lloyd, 1916); Sui Gradini Del Trono (Ubaldo Maria Del Colle, 1912); Tout Est Bien Qui Finit Bien (Unknown, 1912)



Wild Girl
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Archive (Howard Estabrook, 1917)

All Vows
USA / 2013 / 10′
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Drunken Dance
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The Ring
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Chrysalis
USA / 2023 / 5′
Music David Lang
Archive Pathé Review 59 (Unknown, 1920)

Bill Morrison

Bill Morrison has been called “the poet laureate of lost films” (New York Times, 9/22/21). He makes films that reframe long-forgotten moving images. He has premiered feature-length documentary films at the New York, Sundance, Telluride and Venice film festivals. Morrison had a mid-career retrospective at MoMA in 2014. His found footage opus Decasiawas the first film of the 21st century to be selected to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) was named as one of the best films of the decade (2010s) by the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, and Vanity Fair, among others. In 2021 Morrison became a member of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

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