Decasia
Decasia
| 24 January 2002 (USA)
Decasia Trailers

A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.

Reviews
Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall
Manthast Absolutely amazing
Animenter There are women in the film, but none has anything you could call a personality.
rzajac I loved Decasia, but for reasons that might evade others. Hence, I'm not inclined to recommend it.I get a wonderful, visceral response to extremely complex noise and chaos, and Decasia is nothing if not a rampaging smorgasbord of same. So, I was in heaven, watching it.I got a kick out of the music. I spent some of my viewing time reflecting on the composer's process. Fascinating!I suppose I should chime in on the mythic payload. Respectable, seasoned commentators ply a line about the film as a commentary on "morals". Pishposh! If I take away any arc from this piece, it's a running commentary on decay; that chaos deserves our respect. It a powerful idea. It's another reality that, once we face it, pushes us to self- actualization. It reminds me of the aesthetic of John Cage in this regard.One of my disappointments (strange to say, in light of what I said above) was discovering that the film's decay effects were also "found". Those effects were so wild, wooly, rich, redolent that I entertained (for the filmmaker) the conceit that they were meticulously engineered. Well, they *were* engineered, but by Loki, Eris, Kali, et.al. Which makes it all only that much more impressive, come to think of it....
x-princess-beci-x I was made to watch this film in film studies this morning and i was definitely not impressed! In my course, i have watched a variety of weird, out of the ordinary, alternative, world cinema films, and have enjoyed most, but this was so off the wall, and hardly bearable to watch. The best description i can give is: the video that is watched in "The Ring". Like that, but 10 times more random, 10 times more freaky, and there's 67 minutes of it. After the video is watched in The Ring, there is a phone call saying that you will die in 7 days, and we were half expecting this to happen when we finished watching this film, and we would have welcomed it! The whole class was left feeling completely bemused and just a little insane! The music! Half the orchestra was tuned half a tone down, and the other half was tuned half a tone up! As if the film wasn't bad enough! In all, I would say that this film is a complete waste of time, unless you want to torture someone, in which case it is an extremely useful tool!
karbenbased8786 This film is a bunch of random pieces of old, deteriorating, film being played with music. Doesn't sound too interesting - and it isn't. According to the interview section on the DVD, Morrison explains that this film is some sort of symbolic expression of the decay that all life goes through. While this sounds like a nice analogy, the film doesn't really convey anything deep or philosophical. Just watching a bunch of old damaged film doesn't really end up conveying much of anything - all we get is to watch old film! The visual effect is sort of cool for about ten minutes, then its just boring. Its all black and white and just seems monotonous. Its like I get the point about decay in the first five minutes. The music in this film is excellent however, is you like abstract and dark ambiance music. In this case, the film isn't worth much but the soundtrack is great!
kima-6 The premise for this film project is deceptively simple. Take a whole bunch of decaying old film negatives, splice them together and viola: instant art film. This highly recommended film by Bill Morrison creates an effect similar to the visual kaleidoscope you'd see in the Kowaanisqatsi trio of films. Opening with shots of a whirling dervish who punctuates the beginning, middle and end of the film, Morrison sets up a series of "action" shots that when watched slowed down with their naturally occurring decay, take on an otherworldly feeling. Decaying celluloid takes on emotional meaning, reflecting the new readings that the viewer brings to the film. What were probably once quite banal scenes of nuns overseeing children walking through a courtyard, for example, take on an eerie ghostly effect and a scene where a man makes untoward advances on a woman is given heighten tension by the angry swirls the rotting film creates. Some segments were disturbing, others funny, many just beautifully impressionistic.This 70-minute film is quite trippy to watch and your mind will try to make sense of it by finding "things" in the shapes the crackling celluloid creates. (Is that mould? Is it waves crashing on the shore? Neither?) The dramatic score for the film seems lifted off of the disintegrating film, with its odd, oft-times sinister, octaves. At some points near the end, the onslaught of music combined with the repetitiveness of the images was almost too much. Interestingly, no colour film was used. On the one hand it would be difficult to even call this a film, on the other it is actually a film made literally of film. Think Vertov's A Man with a Movie Camera meets Bunuel/Dali's Un Chien andalou. All up, this is a beautiful study in remediation and a film student's wetdream.
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