One of the most significant titles of "The Great War" special event is documentary of award-winning director Bill Morrison Beyond Zero: 1914-1918 with music by Aleksandra Vrebalov, directed by Kronos Quartet.
Sourcing original 35mm nitrate footage shot during the first World War, filmmaker Bill Morrison pieces together a unique visual exploration from footage that has never been viewed by modern audiences, and will never be seen again outside of this film. Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov created the score, commissioned and performed by the Kronos Quartet. The result is moving and staggering.
Being based on original material shot during First World War, Beyond Zero: 1914-1918 is a glimpse of a war fought in fields, in trenches, and in the air. Most of the footage shows some emulsion deterioration – the by-product of a history stored on an unstable base for 100 years. Through a veil of physical degradation and original film dyes, we see training exercises, parades, and troop movement. Some of the battle footage was re-enacted for the camera, and some depicts actual live rounds. All of it was shot on film at the time of the conflict.
We see a record of a war as a series of documents passed along to us like a message in a bottle. None is more powerful than the record of the film itself, made visible by its own deterioration. We are constantly reminded of its materiality: this film was out on these same fields with these soldiers 100 years ago, a collaborator, and a survivor. It is being seen now as a digital image for the first time.
If these are images that we, as viewers, were once intended to see, to convince us of the necessity and valor of war, they now read as images that have fought to remain on the screen. They are threatened on all sides by the unstable nitrate base they were recorded on, and the prism of nearly one hundred uninterrupted years of war, through which we now view them.
Bill Morrison, born in Chicago in 1965, is a director and artist known worldwide. His films often unite rare archive material and contemporary music, and have been screened in cinemas, festivals, museums and galleries all over the world.
Trained as painter, he then developed a profound interest for cinema, film in particular. He has collaborated with some of the most influential composers and performers of our time, including John Adams, Maya Beiser, Gavin Bryars, Dave Douglas, Richard Einhorn, Erik Friedlander, Bill Frisell, Philip Glass, Michael Gordon, Michael Harrison, Ted Hearne, Vijay Iyer, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Kronos Quartet, David Lang, David T. Little, Michael Montes, Steve Reich, Todd Reynolds, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and Julia Wolfe, among many others.
In 2013, his film Decasia (2002), realised in collaboration with composer Michael Gordon, has been chosen by Library of Congress as worth-preserving film for its high cultural value, historical and aestethic. It's the first 21st century's film to get into this historical selection.
