Watched about half of this film in one sitting and then came back the next day and had my twin boys (8 years as of this viewing) watch it with me. I wanted to talk to them about the idea of film, I thought maybe through cartoons they had seen fake versions of when the film would get stuck in the projector and start to heat and melt/burn.Indeed for some of us old enough, we recall this in school or at home with threaded projectors before the advent of digital. Plus I used it to talk about the idea of an image that is scrambled can sometimes have a transfixing effect on the viewer, as you are not sure what it is. I left out the porn overtones (they are 8) but in terms of UHF/VHF or any kind of corrupted signal, how interesting that is.And then we just talked about film being experimental and not necessarily telling a story. Like painting or a sculpture. Well, this is that sort of film. From reading one or two reviews here, am I to believe that the film was not doctored in anyway? Rrreaaly? The boys did see the boxer scene, and that was tremendous they had some creative responses to that, but I would have bet the biggest tub of popcorn that it, and several other images (like the reverse images early on) were indeed artistically created rather than merely damaged by time.Anyways, I might have convinced the boys, and myself too. I think some of this sort of film works better in shorter sittings anyways, but I know a friend of mine who clued me into the great Ann Arbor Film Fest definitely digs Morrison, so I was happy to get a chance to see this, albeit at home on, yep, digital disk.Oh and I cannot resist clicking the SPOILER box for this one just for a lark.

Apart from its sheer dullness (it's a 30-minute 1920s-Surrealist-style montage, backed with tedious atonal music and stretched to 60+ by running it at what appears to be 8 frames/sec) this is the most dishonest piece of nonsense I've seen in many years. Some of the footage is visually striking, especially the hauntingly decayed comedy sequences. But Morrison didn't shoot any original footage. Yet he credits himself, and rather prominently too, as the "author" of the film ("editor" would be more accurate). He's even got recognizable footage from some commercial comedies in there. Yes, it's badly damaged. So what? So is the inside of the Sistene Chapel. So are "Nosferatu" and "Intolerance". But no other director's name or title appears anywhere in this film, although the archives that supplied him footage surely know what they are. It's as if Morrison took "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" and "It's a Wonderful Life"-- which are also damaged, and also in the Public Domain-- chopped off the Milestone and Capra credits and edited them into one movie, "Bill Morrison's Christmas Story", and then copyrighted and sold it. Since these source materials are in the Public Domain, it wouldn't be illegal to do so. It would just be in incredibly bad taste.

Being an avid film restoration film, I was eagerly awaiting the chance to see this film. This film is made up of random bits of film, from various film archives around the world, which has been spliced together at random. The one connecting feature of this film is that all film used is rotting, decaying, faded, bubbling...in other words the film is decomposing. Kudos to the filmmaker for salvaging some of this film and letting the public see what can happen to film if it has not be stored or cared for properly. The footage is totally random, some nature films, newsreels, features...countries featured include the United States, Turkey, Japan, Morocco....scenes of stars like William S. Hart, Larry Semon, Mary Pickford....scenes of dignitaries arriving aboard ships from 1920s newsreels; 1950s educational films.....a really vast array.However the film can be agonizing to sit through, especially because it is in incredibly slow motion, and most of the time we get only a fleeting glimpse as to what is actually in the film frame, most of the time the entire image is distorted. I watched the movie in fast forward, and even then it was too slow. The movie has very haunting music, and this film could easily be shown in October as part of a scary movie festival.

I saw this at the Cleveland Film Festival, and the Director, Bill Morrisson, was there for a Q&A session afterwards. It was hard to sit through the film because most of it is the same; the same images, the same sounds, just a lot of decayed film. No doubt it seemed like a good idea for an experiment, and it was, but if you're not into experimental film making, you will absolutely hate this, as you can see from other's comments.If you are into experimental stuff like this, you might see the point or even like it. The film maker definitely put his neck on the block by creating it; you wouldn't find James Cameron or Quentin Tarantino doing something like this. Maybe Harmony Korine or Richard Kern.In any case, what you'll see is a lot of damaged old film, of nothing particularly interesting, accompanied by a repetitive soundtrack from out of tune instruments. Most of it is very repetitive and somewhat monotonous.