"LIGHT IS CALLING" A Film By Bill Morrison

 



 "LIGHT IS CALLING"

                                                                                                                 A Film By Bill Morrison


I posted this film on the Armchair Traveller last year when it first came my way and bowled me over.


I've always loved the creative re-use of "found footage" and have enjoyed such work by my fellow filmmakers and students from my teaching days. Okay, I'll make a big statement: This film by Bill Morrison is my favourite film of all time for films created from footage of the past. It's in a class of it's own. 


It bears very little or no relation at all to works by those many filmmakers who have tried to "restore films" from a battered old copy remaking them into a brand new copy, shining bright. It is quite different in nature from all those films which are culled from historical footage and compiled into documentaries about a past era or event.


This is a film which breaks new ground. I won't say more, it's all here for you to see!



Light Is Calling

A film by Bill Morrison Music by Michael Gordon

(8 min., 35mm, 720ft./216m, 2004)

World premiere: 23rd Sundance Film Festival, January 2004 International premiere: 33rd International Film Festival Rotterdam, January 2004 Imagery taken from "The Bells" (1926), directed by James Young Starring Lola Todd and Edward Phillips Original photography by L. William O'Connell (1926)

Optical re-photography by Cinema Arts (2003) Recording courtesy of Nonesuch Records Produced by Luke DuBois Backing track: Mary Rowell, Ralph Farris, Joyce Hammann, Cenovia Cummins – violins.


I welcome feedback from all our friends, please don't hold back. This is the first serious post of a work in our reicarnation, our new life after Facebook.


If any of you have other films to offer in this domain, please feel free to make suggestions.


pt


Comments

  1. bobbyboyMarch 14, 2021 at 3:14 PM

    hypnotic indeed... faded memories, distorted memories, wandering wonderings about a time past... how much has changed, how much is solid... these particles and fragments of mind, of memory lost and found... uncertain, unsettling, is the woman ok, are she and the man in love or torment... decay and destruction, hellfire consumes the traces... the soup of light swirling remains as a remnant of times past, but time ebbing and flowing into the future present...
    Just words that attempt to grasp the emotions of this evocative piece.
    Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ptMarch 14, 2021 at 3:39 PM

      Great response "bobbyboy", excellent friend! You should be writing for a more highly respected magazine, say "Cahiers du Cinema" or "Sight and Sound". All jokes aside... I'm very pleased the film made such an imporession on you, as it hae for me. pt

      Delete

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