Decasia

United States

2002

70 Min

Black and White

1.33:1

None

Currently 4.2/5 Stars.
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SOUND Jeff Formosa

Sundance (Frontiers), Rotterdam (Main Programme), Karlovy Vary (Another View), Athens

Synopsis

Black and white stock footage, much of it scratched or blistered, illustrates a Michael Gordon symphony. A whirling dervish, couples laughing, a soldier trying to take advantage of a flower vendor, a camel caravan moving across the horizon, a single plane and then others, paratroopers in the sky, a mining disaster, a pugilist, nuns and children at a school – some images last a few seconds, others for a minute or more. The scratches, blisters, and bygone look of the footage suggest time’s passage. Only the dervish, who begins and ends the film, is intact. –IMDb

Director

Bill Morrison

Bill Morrison (born in Chicago, November 17, 1965) is a New York-based filmmaker and artist, best known for his experimental collage film Decasia (2002). He is a member of Ridge Theater and the founder of Hypnotic Pictures. He attended Reed College 1983-85, and graduated from Cooper Union School of Art in 1989.

Bill Morrison’s films have been screened at festivals, museums and concert halls worldwide, including the Sundance Film Festival, the Orphan film Symposium, The Tate Modern, London, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles. Eight of his titles have been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. He has been commissioned to create films for some of the most important composers of his time, including John Adams, Gavin Bryars, Dave Douglas, Bill Frisell, Michael Gordon, Henryk Gorecki, Vijay Iyer, David Lang, Harry Partch, Steve Reich and Julia Wolfe. Morrison is a Guggenheim fellow and has received the Alpert Award. He has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary… read more

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Doc Block

28Jan13

I refuse to call it purely avant-garde. Though cheaply denunciated as "found footage" I think I 'll go one step further and say this is History's relapse on video art. Now I am not stating that in an objective giving ways to the questions on whether it's prima facie motifs lie in it. But every reel burning out is like the elixir of film burning out, giving rise to the very notions of film negative recoil

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