USA,
2002, 70 min
Shown in 2002
CREDITS
- dir
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Bill Morrison
- prod
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Bill Morrison
- scr
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Bill Morrison
- editor
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Bill Morrison
- mus
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Michael Gordon
- source
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Hypnotic Pictures, 54 East 7th St. #1, New York, NY 10003. FAX: 212-473-8268. EMAIL: bimo@nyc.rr.com.
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COMMENTS
Bill Morrison in person.
OTHER
The majestic Decasia begins with a Sufi dancer awhirl in a beguiling dervish, his body spinning in perfect rotation as the film emulsion that suspends him trembles and warps. This redolent image of return and renewal embodies the cyclical tumult of Morrison’s elegiac film. Abandoning conventional narrative for sweeping abstraction, Decasia mounts a tempest of visual decay, drawing on an antique trove of decomposing film images recovered from several archives. Morrison adores the decay, seeing in it an analog for our own fragility—our spirits like the fluttering images born upon a medium that inevitably fails. The found footage itself alludes to mortality as we experience a flood of daredevils, explorers and athletes, ciphers from the past now wavering in rapturous ruin. Bolstered by a cacophonous symphonic score written by Bang on a Can cofounder Michael Gordon, the film’s frail images gather into a rhythmic universe, creating rich meaning in its abused surface. Morrison’s stunning work is best viewed with a certain abandon, a giving over to its brash tempos and ravaged images. Once attuned to its demands, you’ll find much to admire in Decasia’s decaying textures, an ecstatic gesture to rescue creation from the ravages of time.
—Steve Seid
FACTOID #171
When Festival Executive Director Claude Jarman addressed journalists at the 1977 Festival press conference, he announced that the SFIFF was launching an ’important experiment’ by screening films at the Castro Theatre (at the urging of Mayor George Moscone to take the Festival to the neighborhoods) The experiment must have worked, as the Festival still has screenings at the Castro to this day, in addition to many other satellite venues.
