"Decasia": The Beauty of Film Decay

tregoweth writes "The New York Times has a story about 'Decasia,' a film created entirely from deteriorating nitrate film footage. Ya can't beat analog for interesting disintegration."

small versions of their images on Google cache

[Viking Coder]

small versions of their images on Google cache [google.com]

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Related to your point, this Variety review seems appropriate:

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. Biggest minus is outrageously overlong final credit scroll, which kills much good will at nearly seven slug-slow minutes.

The music is amazing too

[van der Rohe]

Glad to see this film get some props on Slashdot.

The composer of the score, Michael Gordon, is one of my favorite living American composers, and this film is the perfect vehicle for his fascinating, gritty music.

For more info on him and his new music organization Bang On A Can, see their site here [bangonacan.com].

The soundtrack to the film is available from Cantaloupe [cantaloupemusic.com], a very interesting label for contemporary music.

Re:But what about the copyright holders?!

[kfg]

I suppose it "benefits" them by continuing to allow them to rest peacefully in their graves.

If you are about the average age for a Slashdot reader I may well be older than your parents. Much of the material used had already passed into the public domain before *my* parents were born.

The film is *old.* There are no copyright holders.

KFG

Re:Ignorance of copyright

[p4]

I was shocked that the New York Times Mangzine article about this film neglected to mention any of the copyright issues. Very few (no?) motion pictures have yet entered the public domain.

Prior to 1978, copyrights didn't last nearly as long as they do now. Without renewals, copyright protection only lasted 28 years [copyright.gov]. Surely, there's plenty of films in the public domain from the 1910's and 1920's.

Some facts for a change...

[tobyvoss]

I happen to have worked for "Decasia" as one of three projectionists at the event here in Basel, Switzerland.

• It's a piece of Art, folks! Painstakingly selected sequences pitting decay and the fight against each other.
• As best I know, the film was made exclusively with rights-free material.
• The three identical films we simultaneously projected were of course all brand-new 16-mm copies of the old decaying material. No celluloid, no nitrate, no fire - although we did have one projector lock up at the end and melt exactly one frame out...