Part of the Sundance Frontier category, this 70-minute long 35mm film by Bill Morrison is a visually stunning collection of found footage that captures the beauty of older, black and white, decaying film as it contorts, explodes, smears, and transmogrifies the original image into something altogether different. Sometimes the emulsion crackles to create pulsating flares that dance with the figures within the frame. Other times it seems to boil, stretch, and expand a face like a shimmering vision. And so on...
The images are married to an original symphonic score by Michael Gordon (cofounder of Bang On A Can). It’s poetry in motion — and anyone who has ever marveled at the beauty of a film that accidentally burns in the projector’s gate will be able to identify the visual splendor of decay found herein. Bill Morrison has visited Boulder’s First Person Cinema in the past, and it would be nice to think he might return with this new work in the future. (See interview.)