Texts from thedoorsguide.com and Luciusbooks.com
Screen caps credited below
New rare 8mm home movie purportedly shot by Jim Morrison of his girlfriend Pamela Courson
A rare 8mm home movie purportedly shot by Jim Morrison of his girlfriend Pamela Courson is currently being offered for sale by Lucius Books, the same seller that offered some Morrison handwritten pages earlier this year.
Screenshots of the actual footage (right) have been provided to prove its authenticity, however, there is no mention that Jim himself ever appears in the 2:37 film.
According to a handwritten label on the reel box, the footage was filmed in a cemetery on the island of Corsica, where Jim is known to have visited with Pam around April or May 1971. But there are two facts about the film that the seller doesn’t mention.
The first is that one of Pam’s later boyfriends named Randy Ralston told me not too long ago that he is the one who labeled the box “Cemetery in Corsica.” So the handwriting is not Jim or Pam’s. Also, the numbers “10-73″ are clearly written on the box, which could suggest a date. Just above these numbers, some handwriting has been crossed out. Looking closely, it again reads “10-73″ followed by some words that I can’t read. Could it be a location?
An obvious question we have to ask is if this footage was actually shot in October 1973, more than two years after Jim’s death, and possibly at another location entirely.
Not having seen the complete footage or examined photographs of Pamela from this time or even images of Corsican cemeteries, I can’t say for sure, but as we’ve recently seen with Profiles In History and their willingness to attribute a specific date to an item without doing their due diligence, we have to be careful whenever an item like this surfaces not to jump to any conclusions and just agree with what the seller claims.
Do I think the film could be from Corsica 1971 and shot by Jim Morrison? Possibly. But some very important questions have been raised. Could it be from a couple of years later instead? Given that other 8mm footage of Pamela is known to exist and there’s clearly a notation written on the box suggesting another date, I think it should be considered. I’m not convinced either way until I do some more homework.
Suffice it to say, this does appear to be the same footage described in Patricia Butler’s book Angels Dance And Angels Die. But if I were being asked to spend £16,500 (nearly $27,000) on a single item, I’d want to be very sure about exactly what I was purchasing.
If anyone has any more information on this film, I would certainly love to know more.
Thanks to Jim Morrison’s Paris and Yiannis Christodoulides for sharing this news.
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From Luciusbooks.com
An original Super 8 film, shot by Jim Morrison of his girlfriend, Pamela Courson, in a cemetery in Corsica. Filmed using his Braun Nizo S56 Super 8 Camera during a ten day holiday in May 1971. Archivally preserved, with the original spool retained. The film is 2 minutes and 37 seconds long and has never been shown publicly. It is referenced specifically in Patricia Butler’s book Angels Dance and Angels Die: The Tragic Romance of Pamela and Jim Morrison: “The scene cuts to Pamela, slowly walking between an aisle of gravestones. Her head is bowed, and her long red hair shields her face from view for a moment, before she slowly looks up to stare pensively into the camera. A moment later, an extreme close-up of her face, again slightly out of focus, shows Pamela pouting in the direction of Jim, who is operating the camera. It is easy to make out the words she speaks as she tells him, “I don’t want to move”. So the camera pans away from the uncooperative subject, who changes her mind suddenly and runs back into the camera range, reclaiming the scene by dancing wildly among the gravestones, her hair flashing about her like a flaming banner. All at once, Pamela disappears behind a mausoleum, but Jim anticipates her moves and the camera catches her reappearance, running from behind the marble monument and continuing her wild dance.”
On the last night of his life, as recorded in ‘The Last Days Of Jim Morrison: A rare look into the rock god’s journals’ in Rolling Stone magazine, ‘Jim started threading Super-8 films of their travels in the projector. Pamela said they sang together as they watched their dark, jerky, out-of-focus movies of Spain, Morocco and Corsica on the wall. Jim (according to Pamela in all her narratives) played old Doors records- even ‘The End’- far into the night’.
Whilst Morrison is known to have shot home movies with this camera regularly, this would appear to be the only one to have surfaced in the 42 years since his death.
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All Text courtesy and credited to http://www.thedoorsguide.com/ and http://www.Luciusbooks.com/
Screen caps by http://www.thedoorsguide.com and http://jimmorrisonsparis.com/ and http://www.luciusbooks.com/shop/recent-acquisitions/original-super-8-film-shot-by-jim-morrison/
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