Bill Morrison has been hailed as the poet laureate of lost films by the New York Times, September 21, 2021, for his unique approach to filmmaking, often reframing long-forgotten moving images.
He has premiered feature-length documentary films at prestigious festivals such as the New York, Sundance, Telluride, and Venice film festivals.
Throughout his career, Morrison has received numerous prestigious fellowships and grants, including those from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Alpert Award, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Arté - La Lucarne.
In 2014, he had a mid-career retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art.
His found footage opus, Decasia (2002),was the first film of the 21st century to be named to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.
The Great Flood (2013) was recognized with the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award for historical scholarship.
Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) was included on over 100 critics' lists of the best films of the year and was later listed as one of the best films of its decade by the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, and Vanity Fair, among others.
In 2021, Morrison became a member of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
The Village Detective: a song cycle (2021) had its North American premiere at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival and was released theatrically and on home video in North America by Kino Lorber.
His most recent film, Incident (2023),won the Best Short Film Award from the International Documentary Association in 2023, the Cinema Eye Honors for Outstanding Nonfiction Short, and was nominated for an Academy Award in Documentary Short in 2025.
