In November 2021, I was invited to present my work at Histoires du Cinema Festival in Toulouse. During the festival, Francesca Bozzano, the director of collections at la Cinémathèque de Toulouse, invited me to visit their Research and conservation Center in Balma. She wrote “Would you like to have a look to some decomposed images we conserve? I found out some prints that you could find interesting.” Among the relics she showed me were the surviving reels Survivre (1924), directed by the artist Edouard Chimot. I made an edit that made use of the nitrate decomposition visible throughout the print. In my revision of the film, a passport officer (Sylvio de Pedrelli) dreams of an old flame (Justine Johnson), who then appears at his office with another man. Through the magic of nitrate celluloid disintegration, her current partner is temporarily dissolved, and the one-time couple are reunited again for a night of revelry.

Bill Morrison