Bill Morrison's most legendary piece, Decasia, was added to the National Film Registry a few years ago. It's an amazing piece of art, really one of the most impressive acts of a film artist ever done. It's almost a dance piece, and the most memorable piece is literally a dance film. The use of decaying film, the way in which it is manipulated, and the dark, deep tone of the imagery and music all make it an amazing piece. 

But that's nothing compared to Light is Calling. 

​Morrison may work with found film better than any other human alive. He not only works with found footage, but with the film itself, using the decay as an element that creates amazing amounts of visual interest. The first portion of Light is Calling is nearly an Abstract Expressionist painting come rolling to life, as if Franz Kline had set his work to celluloid, or we'd ventured into a Dali background. The piece gains recognisable images, a young woman seemingly calling out to us across the swirling grey, sepia, and black. Civil War soldiers on horseback, riding through the smoke of the damaged film. Yes, this is similar to Morrison's earlier masterpiece, but there is an innocence to this piece, as if we're being told something very private, very secret. Sacred. The music, beautifully lyrical violin and a drone that draws strength from the imagery, is some of Michael Gordon's most effecting. I've heard a lot of his work (and my 1 year old JohnPaul LOVES his stuff as much as he does Philip Glass!) and this is my favorite piece. 

In 8 minutes, Morrison nails every frame, creating something new within a field he's plowed before. I can't say enough about how moving this work iss. 

Before YouTube, you had VHS. That was how you started a movement, by taping as much as you could, and then distributing it around to video stores. This was perfected by Powell-Peralta, the legendary skateboarding company, with their series of Bones Brigade skateboarding videos. 

And I am about to argue that they MUST be added to the National Film Registry. 

​You see, the fact is this is a documentary that chronicles the rise of 1980s skateboarding culture, and all that entails, from the athleticism, to the fashion, to the music, but it's also the best example of the humor that thrived within skateboarding at the time. The music video segment 'Skate and Destrory' is the perfect example. In Bones Brigade II, we're shown amazing skating of two distinct eras: the 1970s low and intricate style that we see from Rodney Mullen, and the cutting-edge flyign style that we see from Lance Mountain, Steve Cabellero, Mike McGill, and a young young young Tony Hawk. It's amazing the difference between them, and they're both great to watch, and ideal to the early age of home video. You can't watch segments like the downhill portion, where guys on boards wearing heavy, welding-style glove go down a mountain road at high speed, and not see the influence it would have over the evolution of things like the X-Games. 

Aethsetically, it's an influential piece because you can see hundreds of imitators of these in the 1980s and 90s, in both the skateboarding and inline skating worlds, but also in the way that almost every extreme sports video took the imagery and use of music and applied them in the same way, from YouTube to ABCSports. Historically, it's a perfect record of this movement, in a way that is much more natural than a doc I know will end up listed - Dogtown and Z-Boys, which was also directed by Stacy Peralta. Culturally, this serves as a record of a culture that has been ignored, for the most part. It is the record of the 1980s skating scene, as well as the entire Teen world. 

The video is low-res at heart, and should be enjoyed as such. It's the DIY heart of 1980s skating.