Decasia

Directed by Bill Morrison

67 minutes / Color
Release: 2012
Copyright: 2002

Decasia and Light Is Calling are included on one Blu-Ray disc.

Bill Morrison created DECASIA entirely with decaying, old found footage, melded to the music of Bang on a Can's Michael Gordon, performed by the 55 piece basel sinfonietta. The result is a delirium of deteriorated film stock, a moving avant-garde masterpiece that leaves its meaning open to interpretation and, most importantly, your imagination.

film still

"Bill Morrison's DECASIA is that rare thing: a movie with avant-garde and universal appeal…. Morrison is not the first artist to take decomposing film stock as his raw material, but he plunges into this dark nitrate of the soul with contagious abandon...The film is a fierce dance of destruction. Its flame-like, roiling black-and-white inspires trembling and gratitude."—J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

"I popped Morrison's video into my VCR and within a few further minutes I found myself completely absorbed, transfixed, a pillow of air lodged in my stilled, open mouth. Now, I'm no particular authority on film, but I do know one-Errol Morris. A short time later, when I happened to be visiting him, I popped the video into his VCR and proceeded to observe as Morrison's film once again began casting its spell. Errol sat drop-jawed: at one point, about halfway through, he stammered, ''This may be the greatest movie ever made."—Lawrence Weschler, The New York Times Magazine

"Compelling and disturbing! Swimming symphonies of baroque beauty emerge from corrosive nitrate disintegration as rockets of annihilation demolish cathedrals of reality."—Kenneth Anger, filmmaker

"A stirring, haunting modern masterpiece...Bill Morrison has created a unique artifact, as enigmatically authoritative as Max Ernst's collage novel "Une Semaine de Bonte." It makes you think of Joseph Cornell's memory boxes, Robert Rauschenberg's time-stuffed assemblages, Anger, Hitchcock. It makes you feel that the art, as opposed to the business, of cinema does have a future - even if it has to be found deep in the past."—Jonathan Jones, The Guardian

Other Ways to Watch

Individuals

Available online from:

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Purchase DVD for $298.00

Credits

A film by Bill Morrison
Music by Michael Gordon

Select Accolades

  • Library of Congress National Film Registry 2013
  • Sundance Film Festival 2002
  • Rotterdam Film Festival 2002
  • Viennale Film Festival 2002
  • Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2003

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