Cinema of Decay: The Films of Bill Morrison(2017)

The Calypso Singer(en)

Animated short based on Stan Freberg's take on the Banana Boat Song.

Red(pt)

Box(en)

A group of friends try to defeat an evil king, and meet some quirky characters along the way.

Montes de Venus(es)

A thief sneaks into the house of an aristocrat and her maids, all of them lesbians. When she is discovered, she will be held there to give herself to their sexual desires.

The Disqualified(ar)

Hailing from Mohammedia, Tunisia, the film documents twelve years in the life of Mehrez. A gifted dancer and actor, but also irresistibly addicted to gambling and horse races, he struggles on a daily basis with himself and the bewildering contradictions of his country. In his unstoppable quest for truthful emotions, Mehrez defies all rules.

Chili's Blues(fr)

At a Montreal railway station, passengers are stranded because of a snowstorm. One of the stranded, Pierre-Paul, discovers a young schoolgirl on the brink of suicide. While he searches for someone to intervene, Chili, the young girl, disappears, only to reappear of her own accord after Pierre-Paul's fruitless search. This brief encounter leads to flashback revelations and interaction among the supporting characters also stranded in the storm.

The Fall(en)

In Budapest, two Americans live together. Adam, a former Manhattan prosecutor at work on his first novel, and Lisa, a cool hard-working financier who idolizes her boss (former Communist turned deal maker, Kovacs) as she tires of Adam's lifestyle. Cut to the subway, where two tough guys are pursuing Marta, a blond waif. She manages to surprise one of them in a hallway, dispatching him with a straight razor, and she barges into Adam's apartment to elude the other. She tells Adam why she is running, a story that implicates Kovacs, and she seeks Adam's help and affection. He takes her side, and slowly Lisa, Adam, Kovacs, Marta, and her pursuer draw toward a showdown.

Subedar Joginder Singh(pa)

It is a biographical feature film on India's Highest Wartime Gallantry Award - Param Vir Chakra winner Subedar Joginder Singh. He fought three wars (as per records) for India before achieving martyrdom in the Sino-Indian War of 1962 while commanding a platoon in North Eastern Frontier Agency (NEFA) (Now Arunachal Pradesh). The story portrays his character and motivation in the scene of battle.

Singing Hands: It's Signing Time(en)

Singing Hands: It's Signing Time

Lohengrin(en)

A short experimental film shot on Super 8, inspired by the music of Richard Wagner.

L'amour Bègue(pt)

Tim is 23 years old. He stammers a lot. His friend is a charmer. For Tim, seducing a girl is an ordeal.

Red(tl)

Red, a shy orphan who spent most of his childhood in a girly bar, grew up to be the town's best fixer. When a rich kid was gunned down in a drug bust that went wrong, Red was hired by Art, a spoiled socialite, to fix the mess.

Law of the Barbary Coast(en)

Wayne Adams is murdered in a Barbary Coast saloon and gambling hall in San Francisco in 1880, and his sister, Julie, enlists the aid of the district attorney, Michael Lodge, in gathering evidence in which to convict the owner of the gambling house of the crime. In order to do so, Julie poses as a dance-hall-girl, and soon finds herself in a dangerous situation.

Perfect Alibi(en)

Melanie is married to Keith Bauers, she has two beautiful children and she is rich. She decides to engage a girl au pair, Janine, who arrives from France. Everything seems to run perfectly. Janine looks shy and timid and well disposed towards the family. But casually Paula, Melanies's sister, finds out that Janine and Keith are lovers and afterwards she dies in an accident.

Grzech Antoniego Grudy(pl)

Flying Supersonic(fr)

Thundering across the sky on elegant white wings, the Concorde was an instant legend. But behind the glamour of jet setting at Mach 2 were stunning scientific innovations and political intrigue. Fifteen years after Concorde's final flight, this documentary takes you inside the historic international race to develop the first supersonic airliner. Hear stories from those inside the choreographed effort to design and build Concorde in two countries at once - and the crew members who flew her.

Decasia: The State of Decay(en)

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

Grizzly Man(en)

Werner Herzog's documentary film about the "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one man's attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.

His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th(en)

A retrospective documentary about the groundbreaking horror series, Friday the 13th, featuring interviews with cast and crew from the twelve films spanning 3 decades.

Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise(en)

Using only archive film and a new musical score by the band Mogwai, Mark Cousins presents an impressionistic kaleidoscope of our nuclear times – protest marches, Cold War sabre-rattling, Chernobyl and Fukishima – but also the sublime beauty of the atomic world, and how x-rays and MRI scans have improved human lives. The nuclear age has been a nightmare, but dreamlike too.

Les Héros de notre enfance(fr)

Triple Fisher: The Lethal Lolitas of Long Island(en)

In 1992, a suburban New York teenager named Amy Fisher captured the national media's attention when she shot her lover's wife in the face. This sordid tale of underage sex, aggravated assault, and Joey Buttafuoco managed to spawn not one, not two, but three separate made-for-TV movies. Drew Barrymore, Alyssa Milano and Noëlle Parker all took stabs at portraying the disturbed young lady, yet a true on-screen depiction of Amy Fisher has never emerged - until now. In this Rashomon of found footage film, director Dan Kapelovitz mind-melds the multiple melodramas into one ultimate metadrama mashup.

Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan(en)

There’s only one person who so accurately personifies movie magic in the history of film, and that man is special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen. Focusing on the man behind the landmark effects on films like Clash Of The Titans, One Million Years B.C., Jason And The Argonauts and many more, this in-depth film features interviews with the great man himself, and with an array of animators and directors influenced by his work including Guillermo del Toro, Peter Jackson, Nick Park, Terry Gilliam, James Cameron and Steven Spielberg. The film also features unseen footage of tests and experiments recently uncovered.

Alien, Terror in Space(fr)

In space, no one can hear you scream! the catchy slogan that accompanies Alien sums up the unprecedented stakes of this film that will mark the history of cinema. In 1979, for the first time on screens, a mainstream feature film will mix two distinct worlds of genre cinema: science fiction and horror. Ridley Scott forever shakes up the cinematic landscape by plunging the audience into anguish with his oppressive universe and his iconic monster. The documentary looks back at the lasting impact of this masterpiece, exploring Scott’s audacity and the genesis of his unique aesthetic. In the claustrophobic corridors of the Nostromo spaceship, the heroine, played by Sigourney Weaver, becomes the first strong female figure to redefine the conventions of the genre, far from the clichés of the time. By revisiting the film's key sequences, the documentary shows how Alien explores profound themes such as survival and dehumanization, while reflecting a scathing critique of the capitalist system.

Génération Club Dorothée - L'incroyable histoire d'une émission culte(fr)

Moonage Daydream(en)

A cinematic odyssey featuring never-before-seen footage exploring David Bowie's creative and musical journey.

Bill Morrison: The Film Archaeologist(en)

Things fall apart, but they are also reassembled and given new life, in an enlightened form. Meet the New York based artist and filmmaker Bill Morrison in this interview about his haunting experimental collage films 'Decasia' and 'Light is Calling'.

Rite of Spring(en)

Black-and-white film projections by Bill Morrison, using archival footage of frigid Arctic scenes.

Analepsis(en)

The video Analepsis, 2003-04, is composed of a series of excerpts taken from satellite television news reports. The individual 1-4 second clips are used to introduce the viewer to a given location. Through his method of re-editing the material and omission of the sound from the original news programs, Snyder restructures the footage, revealing the potential of a place to mean more than one thing and pointing to the cinematographic quality inherent in television news.

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid(en)

Juliet Forrest is convinced that the reported death of her father in a mountain car crash was no accident. Her father was a prominent cheese scientist working on a secret recipe. To prove it was murder, she enlists the services of private eye Rigby Reardon. He finds a slip of paper containing a list of people who are 'The Friends and Enemies of Carlotta'.

One Cut of the Dead(ja)

Real zombies arrive and terrorize the crew of a zombie film being shot in an abandoned warehouse, said to be the site of military experiments on humans.

The Letter(en)

Using the discarded, deteriorating remnants from seven silent film titles, filmmaker Bill Morrison braids a story of intertwining love triangles that pivots between the accounts of two women.

Action in Arabia(en)

Reporter Michael Gordon uncovers intrigue in Damascus, where the Allies and Nazis struggle for control of Arab sympathies.

Re: Awakenings(en)

Original Super 8 footage shot by Dr. Oliver Sacks of his patients at Beth Abraham Hospital, Bronx, NY, who were administered the drug L-Dopa in the summer of 1969 and “awakened” after decades of inactivity is featured in this cine-poem that combines archival footage with a score for solo saxophone composed by Philip Glass.

The Unchanging Sea(en)

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 films about going off to, and returning from, the Sea. The characters in these old films appear to be emerging from the roiling oceans of Time, having floated like messages in bottles for over one hundred years, and now having washed up on our shores to tell us their stories.