Kurt Wagner, aka Lambchop, returns with a brand new album FLOTUS, which stands for For Love Often Turns Us Still, on 4th November via City Slang. The record has apparently been inspired by modern R&B, soul and hip hop among other genres, and has already shared a track from the effort, ‘The Hustle.’ That song now provides the soundtrack for filmmaker Bill Morrison’s new piece The Dockworker’s Dream. Like much of Morrison’s work, it’s pieced together almost entirely from archival footage, particularly material collected at Cinemateca Portuguesa.
Wagner talked about the collaboration between himself and Morrison: “I think both Bill and I understand the power of things being less than black-and-white when it comes to narrative in black-and-white films. He is most poetic in his ability to edit such specific archival images into something moving and lasting. In some ways, my method is the same in that the things I write about are rarely fictitious. Just notes taken from life woven into song.”
Morrison said of the film: “The Dockworker’s Dream developed from the idea that the archive is a port of call, a place where goods are loaded and unloaded and held until a dockworker carries them off. In some ways, the imagery is a metaphor for our process. As a film researcher and editor, I find myself seeking out hidden or elusive film material. In the film, there is the voyage, the expedition—and the hunt: we hunt these rare films in order to bring them back alive so that they can live, for awhile longer, on the screen.”
If you have 20 minutes to spare today, watch below.
