Sunken Films: Watch a Cinematic Meditation on Films Found on the Ocean’s Floor

Bill Mor­ri­son has been entranced by the beau­ty of decay­ing nitrate film for decades, cre­at­ing art out of unsal­vage­able cel­lu­loid. His 2002 film Deca­sia equat­ed the fad­ing of mem­o­ry and time with the chem­i­cal dis­so­lu­tion of silent films, where audi­ences are teased with char­ac­ters and maybe a hint of a sto­ry only to have the images destroyed by nitrates. He’s returned to this theme again and again, cre­at­ing a fil­mog­ra­phy of melan­choly and sad­ness.

In his lat­est short, Sunken Films, Mor­ri­son riffs on sto­ries of films found at the bot­tom of the sea, using the sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia as an entry into the ghosts of cin­e­ma past.

The RMS Lusi­ta­nia was the ill-fat­ed British lux­u­ry lin­er that Ger­man U‑boats tor­pe­doed off the coast of Ire­land on May 7, 1915. It had left New York six days before, and the Ger­mans claimed the com­mer­cial lin­er was secret­ly trans­port­ing muni­tions to Britain for the Great War, a war that Amer­i­ca was try­ing not to join. (Divers nev­er found evi­dence of muni­tions in the wreck­age.)

The attack killed 1,198 pas­sen­gers, and the great ship sunk in under 20 min­utes, an unfor­giv­ing speed. The sink­ing would be one of the rea­sons Amer­i­ca final­ly decid­ed to fight along­side the British. Mor­ri­son edits in Win­sor McCay’s ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the tragedy to show how the boat went down, and there’s some­thing sur­re­al in his ren­der­ing of all the peo­ple, only their heads above water, bob­bing in the ocean.

Morrison’s film also uses footage shot at the time and cap­tions to move the action along. The sound­track is silent save for the nos­tal­gic sound of a film pro­jec­tor. There is only one sur­viv­ing film of the ship leav­ing New York har­bor. Mor­ri­son points out the author Elbert Hub­bard and his wife Alice Moore wav­ing to the camera–Hubbard wrote elo­quent­ly a few years before about those who died on board the Titan­ic.

The Lusi­ta­nia had a cin­e­ma on board, and Mor­ri­son med­i­tates on the films that sunk to the ocean floor, includ­ing one that was sal­vaged: one reel of Col­in Campbell’s The Car­pet from Bagh­dad, now archived at the British Film Insti­tute. It is the only exist­ing reel of this lost fea­ture.

If you think Mor­ri­son then shows the film, you’ll be dis­ap­point­ed. Instead Mor­ri­son heads off in anoth­er direc­tion, dis­cov­er­ing oth­er films that have been lost at sea, and some that have been found, like footage of Vladimir Lenin speak­ing to the pub­lic and more impor­tant­ly snug­gling up with his pet cat. (This rev­o­lu­tion-adja­cent cat’s name has been lost to time unfor­tu­nate­ly.) Caught in a fish­ing net, the weath­ered film is a mys­te­ri­ous object–though not nec­es­sar­i­ly a rare one, the footage is avail­able else­where. Instead Mor­ri­son hopes to leave us with images of under­sea cin­e­ma, reels of kelp-like film, only on view to pass­ing fish.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Evoca­tive­ness of Decom­pos­ing Film: Watch the 1926 Hol­ly­wood Movie The Bells Become the Exper­i­men­tal 2004 Short Film, Light Is Call­ing

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Trip Across the Brook­lyn Bridge: Watch Footage from 1899

Win­sor McCay Ani­mates the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia in a Beau­ti­ful Pro­pa­gan­da Film (1918)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.