Dawson City: Frozen in Time (2017)

[Harold Hallikainen]

AMAZING film about Dawson City, an old mining town that was the end of the line for movie distribution. The studios did not want to pay to have the prints shipped back after the movies had shown there, so they just piled up. Finally, the studios said to destroy them. Instead, their local agent used them for land fill in an abandoned swimming pool under an ice rink. The prints were discovered during excavation for a new building. They have been restored and are the only known prints of many silent movies from the early 1900s. Great film! Available on Kanopy.

[Carsten Kurz]

Wow. What a story! Wouldn't it have been a lot easier to burn them during the winter to have some heating? I mean, easier, not better in the long run...

[Jim Cassedy]

It's also available on Amazon Prime - I watched it there several months ago.

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

I was aware of this story when it was first reported in the news media a few decades ago. I watched the film last year on DVD from Netflix. It was good, but not great. It spent far too much time on the history of Dawson City and not enough related to the films. The DVD had as extras on the disk some of the complete films from the Dawson City find. The actual documentary only has clips.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5215486/