Decasia

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Has anyone else seen this?

What did you think?

What did you think of the score?

― amateur!st (amateurist), Saturday, 1 November 2003 22:12 (twenty-one years ago)

for info see www.decasia.com (uses flash)

― amateur!st (amateurist), Saturday, 1 November 2003 22:14 (twenty-one years ago)

five months pass...

I just saw this over the weekend. I thought it was excellent, actually. The first really satisfying "experimental" film I have seen for a few months. I particularly like the footage of the girls walking through, I think, a convent of some kind, where the celluloid seems to have solarized. As someone who keeps worrying about his own film stock, the most terrifying thing about this already intesne film was the realization that my own images are less than permanent!

I thought the score was great also - a large part of what gave the film a sense of some unifying principle. I like it that Bill Morrison describes it as a "horror film". That's pretty much how I felt about it, too.

Amateurist, please come back and talk about this! I'd love to know if your job (if you are still doing what I thought you were doing) gives you any kind of insight into the process that makes these images the way they are in Decasia - some seemed to be just scratched, others solarized, others had blotches and bubbles on them.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Monday, 12 April 2004 16:16 (twenty-one years ago)

bump

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Monday, 12 April 2004 18:43 (twenty-one years ago)

I saw it. It was beautiful but the score sucked.

― Dan I., Monday, 12 April 2004 19:14 (twenty-one years ago)

and I know the film was made specifically to accompany that piece of music but still.

― Dan I., Monday, 12 April 2004 19:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Wasn't the music composed for the film, not vice versa?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Monday, 12 April 2004 19:24 (twenty-one years ago)

I could be wrong, but I could've sworn it was music first then film.

― Dan I., Monday, 12 April 2004 19:33 (twenty-one years ago)

No, I'm not 100% certain, that's just the sense I got from the interviews. Why do you think the score sucked? A tad bombastic, perhaps?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Monday, 12 April 2004 19:34 (twenty-one years ago)

DECASIA: THE STATE OF DECAY is Bill Morrison's moving avant-garde visual symphony, which sets decaying archival film footage to an original symphonic score by Bang On A Can co-founder Michael Gordon. ... The film was shaped to Michael Gordon's moving symphony performed by the 55-piece basel sinfonietta.

― dean! (deangulberry), Monday, 12 April 2004 19:36 (twenty-one years ago)

The symmetry of the editing was kind've trite and predictable too. Towards the very end of the movie, for instance, when they showed the Geisha again I thought "okay, great, now show the Dervish and end so I can get out of here" and sure enough.

― Dan I., Monday, 12 April 2004 19:37 (twenty-one years ago)

adam, where'd you see it? is it showing in the bay area anywheres?

― (Jon L), Monday, 12 April 2004 19:37 (twenty-one years ago)

It had a DVD release last month, but it was showing at Yuerba Buena a while back.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Monday, 12 April 2004 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

And Dean - okay, my bad.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Monday, 12 April 2004 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Bombastic is exactly the word for the music. All the complaints that people typically have about Godspeed You(,/!) Black Emperor(!) are the same that I have about this score.

But the images themselves are so great, it's just that everything the filmmaker seems to have done (putting them together and placing them by the score) is done badly.

― Dan I., Monday, 12 April 2004 19:42 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm just pasting the description from Plexifilm! Those caps are not mine.

― dean! (deangulberry), Monday, 12 April 2004 19:42 (twenty-one years ago)

I see your point, Dan, but I really enjoyed the bombast. I liked the way the music kept cranking up the intensity until it was (agreed) almost farcical.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Monday, 12 April 2004 19:44 (twenty-one years ago)

i saw it, too. i thought it was nice, but too long by half. i suppose everyone has a different attention span for this sort of thing.

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 April 2004 19:50 (twenty-one years ago)

i saw it on TV instead of in a theater, before dinner one night, so maybe that explains my short attention span.

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 April 2004 19:51 (twenty-one years ago)

eight years pass...

love Decasia.

this is p good too

http://barbesbrooklyn.com/minershymns/index.html

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 9 December 2012 16:54 (twelve years ago)

Ooh, that looks interesting.

― emil.y, Sunday, 9 December 2012 17:58 (twelve years ago)

Hated Decasia - hate Michael Gordon, he's an awful too.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 9 December 2012 19:46 (twelve years ago)

Whatev, Light is Calling is one of my half dozen favorite movies of the last decade.

― Bobby Ken Doll (Eric H.), Sunday, 9 December 2012 20:25 (twelve years ago)

one year passes...

Bill Morrison retro at NY MoMA incl 3 live performances

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1524

― this horrible, rotten slog to rigor mortis (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 14 October 2014 17:37 (ten years ago)

Glenn Kenny on Morrison box:

http://www.rogerebert.com/demanders/beauty-in-the-broken-filmmaker-bill-morrisons-visions-of-decay-celebrated-in-new-box-set

― this horrible, rotten slog to rigor mortis (Dr Morbius), Friday, 24 October 2014 16:57 (ten years ago)

the melting of the imagery becomes a central event in the re-editing of 1926’s “The Bells,” an anti-Semitic propaganda film that Morrison “redeems” through his imaginative reediting in two films

That's news to me.

― Eric H., Friday, 24 October 2014 17:19 (ten years ago)

Don't know it, tho some appear to see stereotypes typical of the era.

― this horrible, rotten slog to rigor mortis (Dr Morbius), Friday, 24 October 2014 17:45 (ten years ago)

Wish I was able to make it to that retrospective; partner's a huge Morrison fan.

― etc, Friday, 24 October 2014 19:59 (ten years ago)

eight months pass...

The Collected Works DVD box set features four DVDs and then Decasia on Blu-Ray - and only Blu-Ray. Where is the logic here, exactly? I mean, I get it, release the Blu-Ray version, but at least include a DVD version too, since, you know, the rest of the box set is comprised of DVDs. Frustrating!

― Wimmels, Friday, 3 July 2015 23:25 (nine years ago)

huh, weird.

i have to admi i don't really like decasia since it basically hits the same note over and over again (emotionally, i mean, though i guess literally too in the form of the drone-y soundtrack). it's not a very complex experience.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Friday, 3 July 2015 23:27 (nine years ago)

one year passes...

saw Morrison's new one yesterday at NYFF, amazing gold rush footage/photos, not to mention an unlikely film-preservation tale. also, 1919 World Series footage!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvT4cQuXyw4

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/09/the-discovery-and-recovery-of-the-king-tuts-tomb-of-silent-era-cinema

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Monday, 3 October 2016 15:01 (eight years ago)

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