“Decasia” by Bill Morrison
Decasia is the kind of film that would incite riots in Paris in the ’20s, the kind of thing that I would aspire to if I was making movies. Director Bill Morrison brought together a set of physically decaying celluloid images from the not-so-distant past, set them to a jarring, discordant score by Michael Gordon, and ended up with something like a post-apocalyptic answer to Koyaanisqatsi. (The Qatsi crew are credited at the end.) Morrison has unearthed truly haunting images: a screenful of rot slowly resolves into a geisha standing in front of a sun-drenched window; microscopic organisms share the frame with specks of missing celluloid; a boxer appears to pummel a swirling cloud of decay into submission. I could go on, but Lawrence Weschler has saved me the trouble by gushing over it in the New York Times Magazine.
The film uses its tortured images to tell stories that I’m having difficulty putting into words: celluloid flypaper trapping stray photons in its coil; ephemeral moments shot, stuffed, and left mounted on the basement wall; a flickering window into the past, slowly given over to the mists of time.
Even though it’s only 67 minutes long, it’s exhausting to watch–afterwards, Justina literally had to take a nap, while I was tempted to follow it up with the lush images and soothing soundtrack of Baraka. Even so, it’s a journey well worth taking. It’ll be showing on the Sundance Channel several times this month, and at my place upon request.
How many of the images that we’re capturing today will even come close to being this decipherable in 2080? I’ll bet that some of the source footage for Decasia will still be viable long after the videotape that I watched it from has faded into snow.