Dawson City Frozen Time (2016)
Directed by Bill Morrison
Written by Bill Morrison
Starring History
Release Date September 5th, 2016
The awards season is an extraordinarily busy time for film critics. With hundreds of films big and small jockeying for our attention, it can be nearly impossible to get to everything. When you’re a critic who also has a day job, that task becomes even more daunting. That’s why I love year-end Top 10 lists. I follow as many as I can find from every place around the world so I can try to get to anything that deeply touched a fellow critic.
I was lucky then to be reading the Film Comment list of the Top 20 movies of 2017 when the title Dawson City: Frozen Time caught my eye. I had seen that the film had been added to FilmStruck, the arthouse streaming service I subscribe to. Since it was one of the few I hadn’t seen and it was so available I decided to watch it and I am so glad I did. Dawson City: Frozen Time is one of the most fascinating and exceptional documentaries I have ever seen.
Dawson City: Frozen Time combines two of my passions: movies and history. This unique and engrossing documentary has a very distinctive premise which centers on a treasure trove of old film reels that were found buried in, of all places, the Canadian Yukon. Using music, still images, and clips from films that date back to the creation of the film medium—the legendary Lumiere Brothers themselves appear in one of the reels—Dawson City: Frozen Time crafts an artfully edited documentary filled with the wonders of history and the movies.
In 1978 a man with a backhoe in the tiny Yukon town of Dawson City was clearing the remnants of an old building when he made a remarkable discovery. Buried beneath this historic building, a former hockey rink and meeting hall, was a treasure trove of film stock dating back to the creation of the medium. What was it doing here? No one was quite sure at the time, but it turned out to have quite a history with a mysterious and even romantic backstory.
Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal.
