DECASIA

Bill Morrison’s Decasia (2002) is composed of deteriorated black and white found footage.   The form and the content of the film are perfectly married—the actual images shown depict dark decaying subjects while the film itself is in a state of decomposition. It opens with a scene showing a lab where film is processed.  

The room takes on the feeling of a morgue; the film developer’s gloved hand reaches into the tank to delicately lift a strip of film as if he is performing an autopsy on an operating table.  In this piece, the film itself is treated as a decaying body, along with all the others shown.  Visually the film is stunning—the imagery is distorted in a unique and poetic way.  

Much of the imagery has a very painterly quality to it, as if turpentine has been spilled on to the frame, diluting and blurring the image into spots.  Some of the footage could even pass as hand painted.  There is one particular sequence where men in parachutes are falling from the sky, into an ambiguous landscape.  The contrast in the image and the softness of the clouds is reminiscent of ink paintings.  

The darkness of some of the more violent images is heightened by the intensely unsettling soundtrack, which features a cacophony of dissonant un-tuned pianos.  The music is loud through out the film, reaching even louder crescendos at points, with violent and wild violins, pushing the film into the realm of horror at some moments.

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