The Highwater Trilogy

A short film made during lockdown.

Made by re-editing a deteriorated nitrate print of The Bells (1926), starring Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff, this work shows the fragility of the film image while foreshadowing the Holocaust.

Chicago, 2018. A man is killed by police on the street. Through a composite montage of images from surveillance and security footage as well as police body-cams, Incident recreates the event and its consequences, featuring vain justifications, altercations and attempts to avoid blame. Bill Morrison delivers a chilling political investigation in search of the truth.

This documentary focuses on the artistry of director Bill Morrison, who leverages decaying film stock from years past to tell new stories that are relevant to today's audiences. The decaying film lends brilliant visuals which add to Morrison's concept of storytelling.

Early Bill Morrison film from 1992, black & white, 16mm.

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.

The true history of a collection of some 500 films dating from 1910s to 1920s, which were lost for over 50 years until being discovered buried in a sub-arctic swimming pool deep in the Yukon Territory, in Dawson City, located about 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.

Bill Morrison’s experimental short features decayed film reels from the lost, German silent film Pawns of Passion (1928).

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 mind of a man working at the Library of Congress and his search for the film of her has an unexpected consequence, as he saves a collection of historically significant films from being destroyed.

Alan is a musician who leaves a busted-up band for New York, and a new musical voyage. He tries to stay focused and fends off all manner of distractions, including the attraction to his good friend's girlfriend.

Drawing from a passage from the Rosh Hashana Service, “Who shall live, who shall die… who by water, who by fire,” this short film deals with that which has been preordained—a future history that will in time unfold before us as the faces of passengers on a ship forces us to contemplate our own fate.

'Just Ancient Loops' employs high resolution scans of ancient nitrate footage, as well as newly created CGI renderings of space to depict different views of heaven.

Singer-songwriter Slink Moss plays the mysterious driver of a Cadillac hearse who journeys across America to pick up and drop off a hitchhiker to his (final?) destination. The nearly-wordless film stylishly re-imagines the open road as a state of Limbo.

Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Iceland, July 9, 2016. The surprising discovery of a canister —containing four reels of The Village Detective (Деревенский детектив), a 1969 Soviet film—, caught in the nets of an Icelandic trawler, is the first step in a fascinating journey through the artistic life of film and stage actor Mikhail Ivanovich Zharov (1899-1981), icon and star of an entire era of Russian cinema.

The 1st Volume of Characters in Motion introduces a new wealth of cutting edge character visuals to the established world of animation. The DVD compiles over 90 stylistically outstanding films by 60 international studios, artists and designers in curated programs such as Characters in Narration, Characters in Rhythm and Characters in Motion. Additionally, a special selection menu allows to sort the 180+ minutes of animation by creator, character or style.