SYNOPSICS
Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) is a English movie. Bill Morrison has directed this movie. Michael Gates,Kathy Jones-Gates,Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle,Frank Barrett are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2016. Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) is considered one of the best Documentary,History movie in India and around the world.
Dawson City: Frozen Time, pieces together the bizarre true history of a collection of some 500 films dating from 1910s - 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. Using these permafrost protected, rare silent films and newsreels, archival footage, interviews and historical photographs to tell the story, and accompanied by an enigmatic score by Sigur Rós collaborator and composer Alex Somers (Captain Fantastic), Dawson City: Frozen Time depicts a unique history of a Canadian gold rush town by chronicling the life cycle of a singular film collection through its exile, burial, rediscovery, and salvation - and through that collection, how a First Nation hunting camp was transformed and displaced.
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Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) Reviews
Outstanding documentary
Bill Morrison, the director and writer of Dawson City Frozen Time, is my new hero. Through an odd set of circumstances he landed at the National Archives in Canada and learned about the stash of silent films discovered as part of a landfill site in the Yukon. Early films were made on highly flammable celluloid, and in a new industry (the first film was in 1895 in France) creating an archive was definitely not considered. So, discovering over 500 "lost" silent films from the early 1900's was like discovering gold all over again. (A gold rush was how the city of Dawson initially came into being !!) Mr. Morrison has woven together the story of silent film, the Klondike gold rush and the creation of a city. If you have the opportunity to see this film, please do so. I expect it is going to win a few awards !!
Wonderful Combination of Gold Rush and Cinema History
This is a must see documentary. It is a fascinating story of both the gold rush and the silent film era. As a film buff I was impressed by the story telling that included photos, film footage of that era and the film that was recovered in Dawson City. The music score blended perfectly with the story telling. This film has "Best Documentary" Oscar written all over it.
Remarkable documentary - have patience as all will be revealed
At first, I thought this was an okay film.10 minutes later I thought it was very good. 10 minutes after that, I realized it was excellent. The pace is slow, deliberate, and has more than its share of "Holy cow!" moments. Be patient as there's a huge story that needs to be told and it has a cast of thousands. Using old movie footage (from films both preserved in Hollywood and "found" in Dawson City) and interviews with some of the people "who were there", Bill Morrison has crafted a big story of a small town in a very big world with history playing out all around it. An extraordinary piece of documentary film-making. Bravo!
Fascinating Images, Great History, however
This is my first review of any film or documentary on IMDB. I just felt I had to say something about this documentary, which I viewed last night (9/9/18) on Turner Classic Movies. As I say in my title, I was fascinated by the photographs and the recovered film that has been expertly restored by Canadian and American film preservation experts, and we should all be grateful for their skill and determination to accomplish this task. I'm also grateful for the filmmakers to bring this important story to light. Perhaps it will inspire others to become preservationists, to search for lost films, or just to appreciate the films we have. HOWEVER.......I must mention two things that caused me to lower my rating of this film. 1) The interminable use of the "Ken Burns effect" (panning and scanning of the still photos). At the thirty minute mark of the film, I had to take a dose of Dramamine to prevent motion sickness. I believe that the filmmakers were attempting to pay tribute to "City of Gold" (1957), an important documentary about the Yukon. A tribute is commendable, but I believe in this case it was taken to distracting, unnecessary lengths. 2) The musical score. I have been watching all types of films for over 45 years, literally thousands, and I can truthfully say that I have never heard a worse film score than this one. This so-called ambient music was totally unsuited for this film. This noise should be called ambien music, because it could make someone want to reach for a bottle of that drug and consume the entire contents.
Fascinating Documentary
This is a fascinating documentary that weaves together the story of the Klondike gold rush, the early history of silent cinema, the flammability of early celluloid film spools, and the mystery of the excavation of old reels in the site of a buried former swimming pool in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. Dawson was the end of the line for hundreds of silent films that crossed North America. Once they were shown in the local theater, they just piled up in warehouses in Dawson. Most canisters were thrown in the river or burned in fires, but some got buried and miraculously preserved in an oxygen-free environment and were able to restored. Bill Morrison, who spent years painstakingly putting this film together made some key choices: he showed pieces of over 100 long-lost films, mostly without narration but with captions identifying each film and its year, along with a haunting soundtrack by musicians from the Icelandic band, Sigur Rós. The clips from the 1919 "Black Sox" World Series were especially interesting to me. I had the opportunity to see the film at the National Gallery of Art, and Mr. Morrison was there to answer questions. He mentioned that in the cache that was unearthed there were pieces of over 500 films, although no full-length feature films. (Who knew there were that many silent films in circulation?) He said he chose to eschew narration, because, after all, these were silent films. Someone in the audience asked him if he had heard of a similar cache more recently found in New Zealand. He said he had, and explained that New Zealand was similar in that it was a terminus point in the globe for such movies as well. Thanks to Mr Morrison, and a little luck, this history has not been lost forever.