Light is Calling, Bill Morrison, 2004

‘Orphan Film’ is a term that American film archivists coined to describe what we’d call archive or found footage. It’s not just old stuff – the MGM back catalogue isn’t ‘orphaned’. And ‘orphan’ is a great, literal and poetic term for this stuff that has been lost, abandoned, or which, as described, a bit more prosaically by the Library of Congress, “lacks either clear copyright holders or commercial potential.”

Of course, it doesn’t lack potential as material for art. And we’re big fans at APEngine – see George Clark’s Seven Wonders, and our interviews with Rick Prelinger, Craig Baldwin, and Vicki Bennett/People Like Us.

The plan was to add an interview with another contemporary artist who works with orphaned film – Bill Morrison – who’s new film, The Miner’s Hymns – premieres at Durham Cathedral this week. And it’s not the we didn’t make the call and ask the questions. And it’s not that Bill didn’t answer them. It’s that our new Telephone Pick up for our Olympus Digital Voice Recorder didn’t, er, pick up. Or at least, not Bill’s answers, only my questions. I toyed with making it up, but if I’m honest (as the day is long), there are plenty of interesting interviews with Bill already out there. I’m a bit in awe of what he does, which can make it hard to think of original, penetrating questions that haven’t been asked before. It’s certainly worth checking out his answers, and you can do that here and here. And there’s this excellent essay.

And if you want to know about The Miner’s Hymns specifically, you don’t need me to ask Bill to tell you that it’s homage in film and music to the coal mining history of North East England, a first for first time collaboration between Bill and the wonderful Jóhann Jóhannsson, initiated by the brilliant Forma agency.

There’s not much more that I can add. The first Bill Morrison film I saw was The Death Train in the early 90s. And it’s terrifying. I do remember what he said when I asked if any work that appropriates archive film is inevitably about death, he said no, it’s not always about death. And that it’s even hopeful, sometimes. But I’m not sure. I think, inevitably, any film of people now dead serves to remind us that we’re not immortal ourselves. These people are gone. The material decay that’s foregrounded in Morrison’s work drives that home. But that doesn’t mean the films are miserablist; they’re exhilarating. It can be comforting to think of the dead. And in the ‘live’ performance – most of Morrison’s films start from collaboration with composers – adds a warmth of humanity.

On YouTube, some described Light is Calling as ‘burning memories’. And maybe I’m using Morrison as others rely on John Edward. Though in Bill’s work, it’s never a cold reading.