Dawson City: Frozen Time

We come away with a contemplative suspicion that we're all participating in something, and even if we don't ever get to see the big picture, there probably is one and it might even make sense.

The true magic that "Dawson City" captures is, simply, the mystery of film itself: a medium that turned people into shadows that burned brighter than life.

In "Dawson City," Morrison offers a fiercely precise and discerning look at movies themselves as embodiments of history.

Bill Morrison, whose extraordinary documentary Decasia turned decomposing film stock into the stuff of avante-garde reverie, returns with another staggering journey into the past.

The thrilling documentary "Dawson City: Frozen Time" is indescribable not because it's ambiguous (it's totally straightforward) but because it does so many things so beautifully it is hard to know where to begin.

The movie's aesthetic is uniquely beautiful.

... celebrates the power of cinema as a time capsule and features clips of numerous films recovered in Dawson to help tell the story of the city and to illustrate the wonders of the world that cinema brought to the citizens in the 1910s and 1920s ...

...an act of resurrection and transformation.

Dawson City: Frozen Time may be one of the more remarkable and transfixing films I've seen in a while.

A found-footage experience akin to a Ken Burns documentary beamed through the Space Odyssey Star Gate

Literally, history was scorched and the city of Dawson recovered it or used it as a foundation for the benefit of its population. "Dawson City: Frozen Time" is survival from historical custody. [Full review in Spanish]

Morrison has made the only fitting tribute I can possibly imagine and the irony is not lost on me that so many films had to be destroyed for it to even exist. Put simply, Dawson City: Frozen Time is a masterpiece.