Filmmaker Bill Morrison and composer Michael Gordon in attendance
In collaboration with the Aurora Picture Show & The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, Morrison and the Museum of Fine Arts will screen Decasia.
Old nitrate-based film stock rots. As it decomposes it gives off an acetic acid odor (the vinegar effect), becomes encrusted with dirt and grime, and develops holes and scratches. It's one of arts' most fragile mediums. Usually, when the decay is far enough advanced and the film stock can't be salvaged, it's tossed out. Decasia, Morrison's latest work, is a 70-minute exploration of pre-1930s celluloid films in their final death throes.
Reviews of this ground-breaking film:
"One of the top ten films of 2003... Bill Morrison's Decasia is that rare thing: a movie with avant-garde and universal appeal... The film is a fierce dance of destruction. Its flame-like, roiling black-and-white inspires trembling and gratitude."
-J.Hoberman, Village Voice, 3/25/03
"A contempory equivalent to Disney's Fantasia, [Morrison's] Decasia is a dream procession of image and sound. Morrison assembled the film portion from ancient, decaying footage that he found in various archives. The images are stitched together in seemingly random order, yet they all tell a hallucinatory tale. Gordon's score weds the hypnotic aura of minimalism to the detuned snarl of highbrow punk. It packs a punch."
- NewYorker Magazine
BILL MORRISON
Bill Morrison has eight titles in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. His films have been screened at cinematheques, museums and concert halls worldwide, including BAM, Carnegie Hall, the Hirshhorn Museum, Lincoln Center, MoMA, the National Gallery of Art, the Tate Modern, and Royal Festival Hall. Bill has received an Alpert Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, as well as production grants from Creative Capital, NYSCA, NYFA, and the NEA. “Decasia”, his feature length collaboration with composer Michael Gordon, has been performed live with a 55-piece orchestra surrounding audiences in Basel in 2001, at St. Ann's Warehouse, Brooklyn, in 2004, and in Los Angeles' Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2006. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and on the Sundance Channel in 2002, and was named one of the ten best films of 2003 by the Village Voice.