Bill Morrison Introduces The Miner's Hymns

Best known for Decasia, his tribute to the beauty of decaying celluloid, Bill Morrison searches the world’s film archives for extraordinary images and stories. With The Miner's Hymns, he has compiled an emotional requiem for a vanished way of life out of archival footage of coal miners, preserved by the British Film Institute National Archive.

These images of working conditions on the coalfields, battles between miners and police during union strikes, and increasing mechanization are set to a remarkable original score by the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. Also screening are three of Morrison's shorts: Release (2010), in which a crowd gathers to watch Al Capone’s release from prison in 1930, Outerborough (2005), which shows the Brooklyn Bridge as you’ve never seen it before, and The Film of Her (1996), which offers a history of the movies in just 12 minutes. (total running time: 85 mins., video)

Bill Morrison's collaboration with guitarist/composer Bill Frisell, The Great Flood, will be performed at the Thurber Theatre on Saturday, March 31.