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
USA / 2012 / 2′
Archive Light is Calling (Bill Morrison, 2004); The Bells (James Young, 1926)
Her Violet Kiss
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Archive Liebeshölle (Wiktor Biegnaski, Carmine Gallone, 1928)
Decay Dance
USA / 2015 / 1′ 24”
Archive Unknown
The Letter
USA / 2018 / 13′
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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
USA / 2021 / 5′
Archive (Howard Estabrook, 1917)
All Vows
USA / 2013 / 10′
Music Michael Gordon
Archive Paramount news outtakes: “The Dead Sea Scrolls” (Unknown, 1965); Queen Kelly (Erich von Stroheim, 1932), Liebeshölle, (Wiktor Biegnaski, Carmine Gallone, 1928)
Drunken Dance
USA / 2023 / 56”
Archive L’empreinte ou la main rouge (Henri Burguet, 1908)
The Ring
USA / 2021 / 8′
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Archive Lásky jedné plavovlásky (Miloš Forman, 1965)
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.