If you are not affiliated with a college or university, and are interested in watching this film, please register as an individual and login to rent this film. Already registered? Login to rent this film. This film is also available on our home streaming platform, OVID.tv.
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.
"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
Citation
Main credits
Gordon, Michael (composer)
Morrison, Bill (film director)
Morrison, Bill (film producer)
Morrison, Bill (screenwriter)
Morrison, Bill (editor of moving image work)