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Decasia
A Hypnotic Pictures presentation. Produced, directed, edited by
Bill Morrison.
By Dennis Harvey
February 4, 2002 – February 10, 2002
Current Reviews... Like Peter Delpeut's Dutch "Lyrical Nitrate"
a decade ago, Bill Morrison's U.S. experimental feature "Decasia"
finds poetry in the abstract psychedelia created by deteriorating
archival film stock. Lacking any obvious thematic or emotional arc,
compilation pic succeeds as a pure exercise in visual stimulus,
its narcotic effect much amplified by Michael Gordon's thunderous,
dissonant orchestral score. Logical destinations are fest avant-garde
sidebars and cinematheque schedules.
Project began as the film component to a multimedia stage extravaganza
that premiered in Switzerland two years ago (for which the score,
played by 55-piece Basel Sinfonietta, was commissioned). While it
demands a suspension of normal narrative/human-interest expectations,
"Decasia" can stand alone as a hallucinatory canvas of
images -- most from the presound era, and all streaked, misted,
darkened, speckled or tornado-disrupted by chemical decay. Much
footage (Sufi dancers, far-flung landscapes, WW1 parachutists) has
an ancient-ethnographic feel; midsection's silent slapstick and
melodrama clips feel like they're from another planet. Pulsing din
of Gordon's Glenn Branca-style soundtrack adds a curiously ominous
dimension to parade of time-imperiled moving pictures.
Music, Michael Gordon. Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (Frontier),
Jan. 13, 2002. Running time: 70 MIN.
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