Kino Lorber Acquires All North American Rights To Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time

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Published on Friday, 07 April 2017 14:26

Kino Lorber has acquired all North American rights to Bill Morrison's DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME, a feature film about the true history of a collection of 533 reels of film (representing 372 titles) dating from the 1910s to 1920s.

The reels, a stunning discovery had been lost for over 50 years until being discovered buried in a sub-arctic swimming pool deep in the Yukon Territory. Using these permafrost-protected, rare silent films and newsreels – as well as archival footage, interviews and historical photographs – the film tells the unique history of a Canadian gold rush town and how cinema, capitalism and history intersect.
 
Featuring a mesmerizing score by Sigur Rós collaborator and composer Alex Somers (Captain Fantastic), DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME had its world premiere at the 73rd Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti Competitive section) and a North American premiere at 2016 New York Film Festival (Spotlight on Documentary). The film also played at the BFI/London Film Festival and the 2017 Rotterdam International Film Festival, and screened yesterday (April 6, 2017) at the TCM Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles, CA.
 
DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME will have its New York theatrical premiere at IFC Center on June 9, 2017, before a Los Angeles release on June 16 at Landmark's Nuart Theatre. The deal was negotiated between Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber and Producer Madeleine Molyneaux of Picture Palace Pictures.
 
Dawson City, located about 173 miles south of the Arctic Circle, is situated at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers and rests on a bed of permafrost. Historically, the area was an important hunting and fishing camp for a nomadic First Nation tribe known as Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in.

The town was settled in 1896 – the same year large-scale cinema projectors were invented – and it became the center of the Klondike Goldrush that brought 100,000 prospectors to the area. The Dawson Amateur Athletic Association (DAAA) opened in 1902 and began showing films and soon, the city became the final stop for a distribution chain that sent prints and newsreels to the Yukon. The films were seldom, if ever, returned.
 
By the late 1920s, 500,000 feet of film – 500 films – had accumulated in the basement of the local Library, under the care of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. In 1929, Clifford Thomson, bank employee and treasurer of the local hockey association, moved the films to the town's hockey rink, stacked and covered them with boards and a layer of earth. The now famous Dawson City Collection was uncovered in 1978 when a new recreation center was being built and a bulldozer working its way through a parking lot dug up a horde of film cans.
 
The films are now housed in the Canadian Archives in Ottawa and at the U.S. Library of Congress, which jointly restored all the titles to 35mm preservation masters.
 
Director Bill Morrison wrote: "DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME is the film I have waited my whole life to make. It covers an epic sprawl of subject matter - from the origins of Cinema to the Klondike Gold Rush. It tells the story of the invasion of Western civilization into a community inhabited by First Nation peoples for millennia, Capitalism upending first those native communities, and then, through corporatization and mechanization, the community of miners who took their place. I am thrilled that Kino Lorber, with their long tradition of supporting films that defy categorization, have embraced this film and will be bringing it to audiences across North America."
 
Richard Lorber also wrote: "Bill Morrison is both a masterful filmmaker and a brilliant historiographer of the cinematic art, so it's a great honor to bring one of his films to the North American market. DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME is also an unbelievable story that fortunately, has fallen in the right hands. I couldn't think of a better match between subject matter and storyteller."
 
ABOUT KINO LORBER: 
With a library of 1,600 titles, Kino Lorber Inc. has been a leader in independent art house distribution for over 30 years, releasing over 25 films per year theatrically under its Kino Lorber, Kino Classics, and Alive Mind Cinema banners, with six Academy Award nominated films in the last eight years, including this year's nominated documentary FIRE AT SEA, directed by Gianfranco Rosi.
 
In addition, the company brings over 250 titles each year to the home entertainment market through physical and digital media releases under its five house brands. It also now distributes a growing number of third party labels in all ancillary media and is a direct digital distributor to all major digital platforms including iTunes, Netflix, HULU, Filmstruck, Tribeca Shortlist, Amazon, Vimeo, VHX, Fandor, Mubi and Others.

Next from Kino Lorber are the theatrical releases of Vanessa Gould's OBIT., opening April 26 at Film Forum and Lincoln Plaza Cinema, and Bruno Dumont slapstick comedy SLACK BAY, starring Juliette Binoche and set for an April 21 New York release at Quad Cinema and the Film Society