Bill Morrison (director)

Bill Morrison (born in Chicago, November 17, 1965) is a New York-based filmmaker and artist, best known for his experimental collage film Decasia[1] (2002). He is a member of Ridge Theater and the founder of Hypnotic Pictures. He attended Reed College 1983-85, and graduated from Cooper Union School of Art in 1989.

Bill Morrison's films have been screened at festivals, museums and concert halls worldwide, including the Sundance Film Festival, the Orphan Film Symposium, The Tate Modern, London, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles. Eight of his titles have been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. He has been commissioned to create films for some of the most important composers of his time, including John Adams, Gavin Bryars, Dave Douglas, Bill Frisell, Michael Gordon, Henryk Gorecki, Michael Harrison, Vijay Iyer, David Lang, Harry Partch, Steve Reich and Julia Wolfe. Morrison is a Guggenheim fellow and has received the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. He has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Creative Capital and The National Endowment for the Arts. His work with Ridge Theater has been recognized with two Dance Theater Workshop Bessie Awards and an Obie Award.

Decasia, his feature-length collaboration with composer Michael Gordon, was selected by the Library of Congress to its National Film Registry in 2013,[2] becoming the first film of the 21st century selected to the list. It has been noted by J. Hoberman of the Village Voice as "the most widely acclaimed American avant-garde film of the fin-de-siècle." The director Errol Morris commented while viewing Decasia that "This may be the greatest movie ever made".[3] The film was commissioned by the Basel Sinfonietta to be shown on three screen surrounding the musicians. The film was released on Blu-ray as "Decasia" by Icarus Films in 2012.

Morrison was the 2014 recipient of Smithsonian magazine's American Ingenuity Award in the Historical Scholarship category for The Great Flood.[4]

Morrison had a mid-career retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art, October 2014 - March 2015.[5]

Morrison's complete collected works were released as a 5-disc box set from Icarus Films in September 2014,[6] and a 3-disc Blu-ray box set from the British Film Institute in May 2015.[7]

Filmography as director

References

  1. ↑ Decasia website
  2. ↑ http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2013/13-216.html
  3. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/22/magazine/22DECAY.html
  4. ↑ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/coming-terms-one-americas-greatest-natural-disasters-180953044/
  5. ↑ http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1533
  6. ↑ http://homevideo.icarusfilms.com/new2014/morr.html
  7. ↑ http://shop.bfi.org.uk/bill-morrison-selected-works-1996-2014-blu-ray.html#.VUDpUc5zIcg

External links