Dawson City: Frozen Time – Official Trailer

This meditation on cinema’s past from Decasia director Bill Morrison pieces together the bizarre true history of a long-lost collection of 533 nitrate film prints from the early 1900s. Discovered buried under the permafrost in a former Canadian Gold Rush town, their story conjures the forgotten ties between the fledgling film industry and Manifest Destiny in North America.

Located about 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle, Dawson City was settled in 1896—the same year large-scale cinema projectors were invented—and became the center of the Klondike Gold Rush that brought 100,000 prospectors to the area. Soon after, the city became the final stop for a distribution chain that sent prints and newsreels to the Yukon. The films were seldom, if ever, returned. By the late 1920s, over 500,000 feet of film had accumulated in the basement of the local library. Much of it was eventually moved to the town’s hockey rink, where it was stacked and covered with boards and a layer of earth. The now-famous Dawson City Collection was uncovered in 1978 when a new recreation center was being built and a bulldozer working its way through a parking lot dug up a horde of film cans.

Morrison draws on these permafrost-protected, rare silent films and newsreels, pairing them with archival footage, interviews, historical photographs, and an enigmatic score by Sigur Rós collaborator and composer Alex Somers. Dawson City: Frozen Time depicts the unique history of this Canadian Gold Rush town by chronicling the life cycle of a singular film collection through its exile, burial, rediscovery, and salvation.

[Brandon]

The choice to make this doc about silent films a silent film itself really helped highlight the music. The hypnotic, ambient score smoothly melds with periodic ethereal sounds to accompany the images. It completely washed over me, and put me into a trance. This is the kind of movie you will come back to many times.

[scottziegler]

I think this is now my favorite documentary. It took me a while to be able to appreciate silent films, they're just so different than what we are used to. These days, I just think they're incredible, beautiful movies.

[foundation]

This was an amazing film. Felt I was taken along on a journey through all the highs and lows that life has. Soundtrack blended into the film flawlessly.

[deboer]

Watching these amazing pieces of art and culture being reborn... Thank you again and again and again!

[daifeichu]

It's amazing to me that these films were found behind Diamond Tooth Gertie's in Dawson City in 1978. I spent the summer in Dawson in 1978. I didn't go into DTG's because I was only 10 years old at the time but my Dad went in. I still have a chit he gave me from it. At the time there was a guy who lived in Dawson named Diamond Tooth Dick. He owned a small island that sold smoked salmon. They would bbq it and would coming out tasting amazing. I worked for the actor who played Robert Service. I'd sweep out the Robert Service cabin before he would recite his poems for tourists.

[Ashy]

I can't get this trailer out of my head. What a haunting score. Can't wait to see this. What a discovery.

[Psilanderfan]

I really loved watching this on TCM! Fantastic footage of films from the 1910’s!

[williamsparks]

I saw 'Dawson City' on TCM two nights ago and will obtain the DVD ASAP - brilliant and moving. The narrator and speakers don't comprehend the meaning of the images. The nitrates
films speak for itself to tell us about a world we nearly lost - incredible. Don't focus on the town or the 'narrative', interesting as they are, just more about the lost
film images, we see before us our world of a century ago.

[baguetteification]

No doubt one of my favorite documentaries but let's also give a shoutout to the trailer and Alex Somers's score. Hands down one of the best in the past 15 years.

[amyzachary]

To me, the film is not so much about decay, but decay being an artifact of Time. To me, the film is al; about Time in all its permutations and paradox. How something can be of the past, but remain in our mind's eye as the present? The film brought to mind the opening of T. S. Eliot's to his poem " The Four Quartets": "Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future/and time future contained in time past." Eliot was influenced in this thinking about Time by the French philosopher, Henri Bergson who influenced not only Eliot, but Virginia Woolf (Mrs Dalloway) as well. In any event, the film and the soundtrack are both marvels.

[springhillgolfer]

Great film. Also began reading about the hardships of the people trekking there through the Chilkoot and White Passes was fascinating. Very interesting to learn from the movie that Trumps grandfather (or was it his great grandfather?) opened a hotel/saloon/brothel in Dawson City during the Klondike gold rush and became rich.

[katemoylan]

I lived there ! And yes, it is all true! I wrote a paper in college about Dawson.

[anthnee]

It's such a shame that, back then, they didn't realize the importance these films would have had in years to come

[Lostamericana]

Amazing stuff. Can't wait to see this film.

[emilypurcell]

This is amazing. Is there a list of the films found!

[LaBarge]

If you have a public library card, you can get a free membership to Kanopy (kanopyDOTcom) and watch this film free of charge.

[jackroark]

does anyone know if the speed of the old clips is corrected in the movie?

[Fisarmonica]

When's it coming to the San Francisco Bay Area?

[miltonfilmfestival]

Check it out at the Milton Film Festival, Jan 27th at 8:30 PM in Milton, Ontario

[zaroffhound]

Ribbon of Darkness by Gordon Lightfoot would suit some of this methinks.