Bill Morrison, 2025 Oscar nominee, visited Occidental March 6 for a screening of his 2017 documentary “Dawson City: Frozen in Time.” The film tells the story of the birth, golden age and decline of Dawson City, a northern Canadian town which exploded in population for a brief time during the Klondike gold rush, only to quickly fade into obscurity a few years later.
Professor of Media Arts & Culture (MAC) Allison De Fren, who organized the screening, said she first got in touch with Morrison through a chance encounter at a screening of his Oscar-nominated short film “Incident” at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood.
“I’ve long been a fan of his work, and I was lucky to meet him in the lobby of the theater where I told him that I’m a media and arts professor at Occidental and asked him if he would like to come screen his movie while he was in LA for the Academy Awards,” De Fren said.
De Fren said she was fascinated by Morrison’s innovative use of archival footage, which is a recurring theme in much of his filmmaking. Part of “Dawson City: Frozen in Time” concerns the discovery of a cache of rare and fragile nitrate film reels in Dawson City in 1978, preserved for many decades in an abandoned swimming pool covered by permafrost. Morrison used this film in the the documentary, so the story of Dawson is partly communicated through the restored reels discovered in the town itself.
“He’s worked a lot with decomposing nitrate film in his documentaries, especially reels from before 1940. ‘Dawson City: Frozen in Time’ is one example of this, but we also screened another film of his, ‘Decasia’ at Vidiots a few days ago,” De Fren said. “‘Decasia’ is a film composed entirely of nitrate film reels in advanced stages of decay, which create these beautiful and ephemeral images and patterns that resolve and disappear before your eyes.”
Nitrate film is a special type of film stock which was widely used from the late 1800s to the 1950s. It is made of nitrocellulose and camphor, two organic compounds which make the film stock prone to decay over time, and is also incredibly flammable. The film stock produces very clear images but is so volatile that if stored improperly, it can spontaneously combust in an extremely hot flame that cannot be extinguished, even if submerged in water.
Audience member Francesca DiBona ’23, a MAC major, said economic incentives drove the mass production of nitrate film in the early 20th century, rather than a lack of safer alternatives.
“Nitrate film should never have been made,” DiBona said. “They knew how dangerous it was very quickly after it began production. But it was cheap, and so I think that part of what Morrison is trying to communicate is the amount of destruction of life and property that happened because of this capitalist desire for profit.”
Morrison said the dangerous nature of nitrate film was part of the reason why the reels used to make “Dawson City: Frozen in Time” were preserved and why the making of the documentary was possible in the first place.
“Dawson City’s Golden Age coincided with the birth of cinema as entertainment. So during this time thousands of film reels were brought into the city, and hundreds of films were played each week in packed theaters.” Morrison said. “There were films shown there that exist nowhere else today, like footage of the infamous 1919 world series game between the White Sox and the Reds.”
According to Morrison, the flammable nature of old reels meant that they were very hard to store and dispose of once the films were no longer relevant for public screening. Morrison said it was the local hockey team that eventually provided the solution on what to do with old films in Dawson, as they were used to fill out an old swimming pool in order to convert it into an ice hockey rink.
“When they dropped the films into the pool, they were fully expecting them to disintegrate and become one with the earth. But instead they were inadvertently preserved due to the unique climate at those latitudes,” Morrison said. “Other copies of those reels were scattered around the world and were lost to fires and decay. But these stayed frozen for 50 years and became the last of their kind.”
DiBona said the part of the finished project that moved her the most was the humanity that could be gleaned from the actions of the people captured in the antique footage.
“The waterlogged images of the people ascending Chilkoot pass really reminded me of the photos you see today of people ascending Everest,” DiBona said. “What struck me were these images of people risking their lives for what is inherently a very similar pursuit, of wealth in one case and recognition in the other. I thought a lot during that part, about the ways we’ve changed and the many ways we haven’t.”
Contact Adam Pildal at pildal@oxy.edu
