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"Decasia": The Beauty of Film Decay
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Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
But what about the copyright holders?! (Score:1, Interesting)
Cool and all, but (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:All they offer is a VHS copy (Score:3, Interesting)
I have some of that stuff :) (Score:2, Interesting)
I think I have about 100 feet of it left. It's safely (?) stored in my Michigan basement (no, not a dirt floor) which is ~68 deg.F. 24/7/365.
My father was a professional photographer; it's left over from his days of filming Generals and Celebrities in the LA area in the 40s. I was in a band when I found it - it provided the best promo shots we ever got when used with proper flash and a remote shutter switch with a winder.
With the dangers involved, it's not stored near anything flammable, and I will put some back into service soon (new darkroom in the next six months) - it beats the crap outta the Kodak offerings for B/W, IMHO.
Caveat: I'd guess it's fastest (pushed) speed is ASA 20 :(
Ignorance of copyright (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it offensive how casual industry "insiders" tend to be about copyright violations, while they simultaneously condemn audience members for time- or space-shifting their own works.
Hopefully reality will catch up to them soon enough - the only available subject for the next "Decasia" will be the white noise of encrypted video streams, their keys long lost in obsolete trusted playback hardware...
Bill Morrison showed this at my school. (Score:2, Interesting)
For what it's worth, here's what I wrote about it:
Film Today
Decasia
Decay to many people is a sad thing. Bill Morrison's film shows it as more of a thing of beauty. It is kind of an odd viewpoint, mixing the horror of films lost with the beauty of the method that destroys them. In the past I've heard stories of people opening film canisters to find nothing but dust, or of films being harvested for the silver. It's almost painful to think of. But Morrison was on a hunt to find these decayed films. It must be an odd conflict to feel the loss of the old imagery but to be happier because of that that destroyed it. There is certainly a beauty in decay, similar to that which is demonstrated in fractals and other "chaos theory" art. Decasia simply more related to film itself.
Some of the images carried strange moods. The near introductory footage of the machines processing the film was very much like someone telling the story of film. And it was followed closely by the most decayed footage in Decasia, as previously mentioned in class; the scene with the nuns was most unsettling. Aside from the mood created by the music, the rotation of the contrast and the flashing of the light made the whole scene look like nuns chasing children through an apocalyptic war zone. I think also that anytime you have a nun moving in slow motion that you can scare people.
I think Decasia was an unusual film in that Morrison intended to create a hypnotic state. A state that isn't entirely uncommon in experimental films, but often unwanted. I did like the way he made the "story" rather ambiguous, as many artistic films use rather vague methods to convey a more specific storyline, and then usually fail to do so. Decasia is able to succeed without doing anything specific.