The Miners' Hymns

Viewpoints

World Premiere

USA, U.K. | 52 MINUTES | English |

THE MINERS' HYMNS

Documentary

Filmmaker Bill Morrison is one of the leading international artists working within the genre of found footage filmmaking. In his previous work, like The Highwater Trilogy (TFF '06) and Release (TFF '10), he often uses shots replete with signs of chemical deterioration and decay. He then refashions these images via digital processing techniques into meditations on the fragility of human existence. In The Miners' Hymns, Morrison shifts his emphasis from decaying footage to stunning black-and-white images that have been preserved in the British National Film Archives. From this raw material, Morrison artfully constructs a story of British coal miners at work below the surface of the earth, together with their vibrant, close-knit community above ground. Morrison intercuts this material with color footage that he himself filmed. These contemporary aerial landscapes of nondescript shopping malls and empty fields of green cover over the now-abandoned collieries situated in Northeast England.

Morrison's compelling narrative pays tribute, in an emotionally moving and formally elegant fashion, to a vanished era of 20th-century working-class life. An original score by avant-garde Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson enriches this tale with a heartrending, elegiac tone.

 



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CAST & CREDITS

Directed by Bill Morrison

BILL MORRISON has had films screen at festivals, museums, and concert halls worldwide, including Sundance, the Tate Modern, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MoMA acquired eight of his titles. He has received the Alpert Award and fellowships from Creative Capital, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the NEA.
Producer
Forma
Director
Bill Morrison
Screenwriter
Bill Morrison, Jóhann Jóhannsson, David Metcalfe

CONTACTS

Sales Contact
Bill Morrison
Hypnotic Pictures
New York, NY 10009
Phone: 917.445.8529
bimo@nyc.rr.com