THE FILMS OF DECO DAWSON

Synopsis

Two hours from the Arctic Circle on permafrost-piles stand the ruins of Dawson City, the petrified heart of the Klondike Gold Rush. Photographed with aching preciousness and paired with archival audio-accounts of gold-digging pioneers, Sluice Box and a Rocker depicts a visual requiem of a town that still breathes the air of its deceased.

NOTES:

Winner of the Sir Edmond Hillary Award: 2010 Mountain Film Festival
in Mammoth, CA - Short Film Competition.

Both the Sluice Box and the Rocker are antiqued mining contraptions used to much acclaim during the Klondike Gold Rush in and around Dawson City, Yukon 1897-1899.


Trudging through waist high snow banks photographing the 110 year-old ruins of Dawson City, filmmaker Deco Dawson has uncovered quite possibly one of Canada’s least explored and unpreserved architectural regions, a history whose echo’s from the past are both text-book familiar and yet almost entirely uncharted.


Pairing together archival audio of first hand accounts of the city and its fortunes, Dawson photographs the ruins with such aching preciousness one cannot help but view the film as a visual requiem of a town that breathes the air of its deceased.