Based on the story of Howard Walls, A clerk at the Library of Congress who saved a collection of early paper reel films from the incinerator, director Bill Morrison embellishes the tale a bit in this inspired short work. Here, the vision of a woman in an early porno film has been engrained in the...
The ill-fated coal mining communities in North East England are the subject of this inspired documentary by multi-media artist Bill Morrison. Their story is told entirely without words, yet the film is far from silent: it features a remarkable original score by the Icelandic composer Jóhann...
Originally planned as part of Michael Kanieckis play, «Howard Hughes: The World Is Round», the film follows the internal monologue of billionaire Hughes as he navigates between Earth and The Screening Room. James Godwin is featured in the voice-over. The performance was presented at The Kitchen,...
A response in music and film to the conflict that launched a century of war, and a celebration of the power of art to keep us sane and offer us comfort. Beyond Zero: 1914-1918 brings together three of the world's most pioneering artists: the Kronos Quartet, known for decades for their trailblazing...
This is an excerpt from the 60-minute film commissioned for Conrad Cummings's opera of the same title, which was produced by Ridge Theater and staged at La Mama, NYC, in June, 1992.
Video by Bill Morrison created for the Ridge Theater production of "Persephone", with music by Ben Neill and Mimi Goese. The staged production was part of the BAM Next Wave Festival 2010.
On March 17, 1930, a crowd assembled outside Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary in hopes of witnessing Al Capone's release from prison. Morrison and Vijay Iyer turn a single archival panning shot of that scene - origianally filmed in 1930 by Jack Painter - and its accompanying audio track -...
Frequent Kronos collaborator Bill Morrison uses rare, early-20th century news footage to uncover ways that narratives about race have been used in the U.S. to divide people and maintain power.
The film The Unchanging Sea (2018) was inspired by the discovery of a decaying print of DW Griffith's The Unchanging Sea (1910) in the nitrate vaults of the Library of Congress. Taking this ancient title as its point of departure, a new narrative was re-assembled from a variety of similarly ancient...
An examination of weaving and the loom as the predecessor to modern-day computing. Using punched cards, weaving programs were designed for looms in 18th century, and by the dawn of the 19th century, the process was automated. This was the percursor of modern computing hardware.
An early Bill Morrison short, in this work he traverses an urban landscape utilizing high contrast black and white footage. The bustling nature of the setting is complimented by the energetic music by Michael Gordon.
A scene from The Bells (1926) is optically reprinted and edited to Michael Gordon's 7 minute composition. A meditation on the fleeting nature of life and love, as seen through the roiling emulsion of a film.
A series of conversations and monologues captured in the kitchen of the famous Vanguard jazz club in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1994- 95 by the director, who was working at the club at the time as a dishwasher.
