Vice: What a Century-Old Film Found in Permafrost Says About Race in the US Today

[silentfilm]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyvvyq/ ... -relations

I've posted this news article because it deals with silent film newsreels and the Dawson City film find. If the discussion veers into modern-day politics I will close the discussion. -- Bruce

What a Century-Old Film Found in Permafrost Says About Race in the US Today
Newsreels of race riots from 100 years ago look a little too much like the Capitol Hill riots on Jan. 6.
NC
by Nathan Cross
May 6, 2021, 6:00am

White protesters clash with police outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1920. Left photo by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/ Washington Post via Getty Images; right: still from "Buried News"

In 1978, a Pentacostal minister and occasional backhoe operator in Dawson City, Yukon, was digging through the frozen earth where a hockey rink once stood when he hit wood. He stopped to check it out and found piles of discarded sports gear and garbage—as well as reels and reels of long-lost silent-era film.

Known as the “Dawson City Film Find,” the films from the early 1900s—preserved for nearly a century in the permafrost—have since been restored and provide a captivating glimpse into a bygone era.

Made of highly combustible nitrate, it was too dangerous—and too expensive—to return the reels to the faraway states where they originated. The films began to pile up in the basement of a bank until 1929, when the bank manager filled the town’s swimming pool with the films and other debris to help level the surface when the pool was converted to a hockey rink.

New York-based film director Bill Morrison has long been fascinated by the find. In 2016, he released the critically acclaimed, feature-length documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time.

In Dawson City, Morrison uses a combination of the archival footage, old photos, and text to tell the story of the northern Yukon town and other events of the time: like the Klondike Gold Rush, when nearly 100,000 goldseekers from all over the world flocked to Canada’s north. He even touches on the origins of the Trump family fortune, when Donald Trump’s grandfather opened a brothel along the gold rush trail to Dawson City.

Now, he’s back with another film, once again featuring the footage found buried in the permafrost—but this time focused on U.S. race riots.

“I found these four newsreels that dealt with race relations in the U.S. 100 years ago, the time around what is known as the Red Summer of 1919,” said Morrison.

The Red Summer was characterized by dozens of violent attacks on Black communities in many cities across the U.S. during a period of economic downturn following the First World War.
Police try to hold the line outside the Lexington, Kentucky, courthouse in 1920, where a Black war veteran is on trial for the murder of a young white girl. Still from "Buried News"

Police try to hold the line outside the Lexington, Kentucky, courthouse in 1920, where a Black war veteran is on trial for the murder of a young white girl. Still from "Buried News"

Morrison’s 13-minute short opens with footage of the scene of the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917. Remnants of charred buildings protrude from decimated neighbourhoods, alluding to the magnitude and chaos of events.

Buried News then cuts to black and white footage of thousands of neatly dressed Black men and women marching down New York City’s Fifth Avenue during the Silent Parade of 1917, a mass protest in response to ongoing racial violence. From “Make America Safe for Democracy” to “Your Hands are Full of Blood,” the protesters’ signs are hauntingly familiar.

When the third newsreel begins, viewers are transported to Omaha, Nebraska, in 1919. The water-damaged footage shows a local courthouse littered with rubble and shattered glass, shortly after a white mob stormed the building to lynch a Black man being held inside.

The climax of the film depicts extremely rare footage showing thousands of white men descending on the Lexington, Kentucky, courthouse in 1920, where a Black war veteran is on trial for the murder of a young white girl.

With a handful of police and a small rope barricade standing between the mob and the courthouse, the tension is palpable as the crowd grows restless. Members of the National Guard are stationed further back, perched atop large machine guns. Violence erupts and the mob presses forward, jostling with police who are trying to hold the line.

The anger of the era is on full display when the mob momentarily breaks through the line. Police slowly retreat up the steps of the courthouse as the mob pushes on. Shots are fired, six lives are lost, but the crowd is ultimately repelled.

As the credits begin to roll, Morrison incorporates recent video of the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill, which bears an eerie resemblance to the historic footage.

“On Jan. 6, I saw the insurrection at the Capitol here in Washington, D.C., and was struck by how the same forces were still at play,” said Morrison. “Here we are 101 years later and not much has changed. Even the faces seemed the same.”

A man tries to break a police line outside the Lexington, Kentucky, courthouse in 1920, where a Black war veteran is on trial for the murder of a young white girl.

A man tries to break a police line outside the Lexington courthouse in 1920. Still from "Buried News"

Morrison said the Capitol Hill images were a last-minute addition. “People would have gotten it anyway, but the timing was so perfect and the actions were so egregious on Jan. 6, I thought it bore memorializing.”

Morrison paused for a second when asked about what the film tells us about the United States.

“This country was really built on a fault line of slavery and race. We continue to wrestle with it without directly acknowledging it head on,” he said.

“Until there are confessions made, and, more than anything, vocal acknowledgement of some of the inequality in our society, we’re going to continue to stoke the same sort of flames.”

Buried News premiered at the Dawson City International Short Film Festival last month, where it was projected drive-in-style on the exterior wall of the historic Palace Grand Theatre, only a few hundred metres from where the old film reels were originally discovered. It shows next at the Kronos Quartet Festival online in June, and at a number of film festivals in Europe this summer.

[Trueblood]

Thanks very much for posting this, Bill. A valuable view from the past on what's happening today. I hope I get to see soon this new documentary from Morrison.

David

[Trueblood]

I meant, of course, "Bruce" not "Bill".

D.

[tslater]

Thank you for posting this great article about this tremendously valuable film footage. Are there any clues as to who the original filmmakers or production company were? Why was the material in Dawson City? (Please excuse me if these questions have been answered before.)

[Mike Gebert]

Things wound up in Dawson City because it was the end of the line for distribution and it wasn't worth shipping them back.

I talked with Bill Morrison on the podcast when Dawson City: Frozen Time came out.

[boblipton]

Way back when, when a film shown in a theater was a physical thing, it would play for a while, if it was an A picture, in the movie palaces, then would go to secondary markets, like neighborhood theaters, and out on a long chain…. Rural theaters. Eventually, wear and tear would wear out the prints, and it would reach the end of the distribution chain. While some companies, most notably MGM, would get back the movies, other distributors would simply not bother, it would reach the end of the line and be dumped. Dawson City was the end of one of those lines. Films arrived there, and then stopped. So they piled up, until they got dumped into a swimming pool being converted into a skating rink. Or buried. Or burned for silver.

Bob

[silentfilm]

It looks like that you can watch it online at NOON PDT TODAY...

[Zepfanman]

Buried News and five other short films by Bill Morrison are available here on this free Arts Letters & Numbers exhibition, through November 21st: https://artslettersandnumbers.org/six-s ... 2020-2021/

Via https://www.facebook.com/BillMorrisonFi ... 9266235244

This probably deserves its own post, but he's got a new feature documentary, too:
"Thrilled to finally announce the North American premiere of THE VILLAGE DETECTIVE: a song cycle (81’, 2021) at the #telluridefilmfestival2021, and opening at IFC Center on 9/22 from Kino Lorber. Featuring an original score by David Lang performed by Frode Andersen and My Brightest Diamond. Produced by Maria Vinogradova. Many thanks to Gísli Fannar Gylfason for retrieving the reels from the sea, and to Erlendur Sveinsson for preserving them and sharing them with me. So excited to share them with you!"
https://www.facebook.com/bill.morrison. ... 8220978200
Trailer: