Zodiac Killer Project + The Vanguard Tapes

SHOWCASE SCREENING

With Charlie Shackleton and Bill Morrison in person

Dir. Charlie Shackleton. 2025, 91 min. U.K./U.S. DCP. When his plans for a true crime documentary hit a wall, First Look veteran Charlie Shackleton set about reconstituting what might have been, while deconstructing what we’ve come to expect from an oversaturated genre. Using Bay Area landscapes, archival material, reenactments, film and TV clips, and his own wry and nimble voice-over, Shackleton walks us through what his film would have been like—and leaves us to question what we might be missing. Winner, NEXT Innovator Award at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. New York premiere. 

Preceded by
The Vanguard Tapes  
Dir. Bill Morrison. 2025, 33 mins. U.S. DCP. In 1995, Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Bill Morrison (Incident, Dawson City Frozen Time) was a dishwasher at the Village Vanguard, the legendary jazz club in New York City’s Greenwich Village that opened in 1935. He began carrying a Hi8 video camera to his workplace, seeking permission from musicians to document their interactions in the kitchen during breaks. Morrison’s poignant and deliciously candid film is comprised of conversations with and monologues by legends Cecil Taylor, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Harold Mabern, Jamil Nasser, and others, many of whom are no longer with us. North American premiere  

Tickets: $17.50 / $12 senior and students / $10 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership. 

Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. 

About the filmmakers:

Bill Morrison has been called “the poet laureate of lost films” (New York Times). He is best known for two cult classics: Decasia (2002), the first film of the 21st century to be named to National Film Registry, and Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016), often listed as one of the best films of its decade. His last film, Incident (2023), won the International Documentary Association Award, the Cinema Eye Honors, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 2025.

Charlie Shackleton is a nonfiction filmmaker working across film, television, radio, and immersive media. He is one third of the London-based production outfit Loop. Zodiac Killer Project premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.