Bill Morrison, the New York-based experimental film-maker, has, over the course of his 25-year career, continuously engaged with degradation and the ravages of time in a way that can perhaps only be compared – and even then in a different medium – with composer William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops. Morrison’s films, often constructed from found film stock so ancient that the nitrate is literally crumbling off it, scrupulously interrogate our frailties and our feelings of loss and impermanence in a way that’s both moving and ultimately cathartic.
The release of a BFI triple Blu-ray/DVD box set of his selected works, then, is cause for celebration and Rough Trade East have chosen to mark the occasion by hosting an evening at which Morrison himself will introduce some of his selected films – ‘Film Of Her’, ‘Light is Calling’, ‘Outerborough’ and ‘Just Ancient Loops’ – and talking to Gareth Evans, film curator of the Whitechapel Gallery, on April 22. For full details and tickets, head here; in the meantime, watch an excerpt of ‘Just Ancient Loops’ above.
