Decasia: The State of Decay

Bill Morrison's 2002 film is made from decayed nitrate reels. The images come from the early era of cinema and all of them have chemically rotted; stains, blisters and dissolves have added their own layer over the picture. The film uses that decay as material rather than fault. A boxer throws a punch at an invisible stain, a face disappears into a dissolve, a crowd becomes its own chemical texture. There is no narrative; the connection lies entirely in the rhythm of the decay. The original orchestral score by Michael Gordon is the film's second body; sound and image do not work separately. In 2013 it entered the United States national film registry and was the first film of the twenty-first century selected for it. Who it's for: those who like experimental cinema and work built from archive material. Who it's not for: viewers looking for narrative or information; across eighty minutes the film provides neither.