67 minutes / Color
Release: 2012
Copyright: 2002
Decasia and Light Is Calling are included on one Blu-Ray disc.
Bill Morrison created DECASIA entirely with decaying, old found footage, melded to the music of Bang on a Can's Michael Gordon, performed by the 55 piece basel sinfonietta. The result is a delirium of deteriorated film stock, a moving avant-garde masterpiece that leaves its meaning open to interpretation and, most importantly, your imagination.
"Bill Morrison's DECASIA is that rare thing: a movie with avant-garde and universal appeal…. Morrison is not the first artist to take decomposing film stock as his raw material, but he plunges into this dark nitrate of the soul with contagious abandon...The film is a fierce dance of destruction. Its flame-like, roiling black-and-white inspires trembling and gratitude."—J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
"I popped Morrison's video into my VCR and within a few further minutes I found myself completely absorbed, transfixed, a pillow of air lodged in my stilled, open mouth. Now, I'm no particular authority on film, but I do know one-Errol Morris. A short time later, when I happened to be visiting him, I popped the video into his VCR and proceeded to observe as Morrison's film once again began casting its spell. Errol sat drop-jawed: at one point, about halfway through, he stammered, ''This may be the greatest movie ever made."—Lawrence Weschler, The New York Times Magazine
"Compelling and disturbing! Swimming symphonies of baroque beauty emerge from corrosive nitrate disintegration as rockets of annihilation demolish cathedrals of reality."—Kenneth Anger, filmmaker
"A stirring, haunting modern masterpiece...Bill Morrison has created a unique artifact, as enigmatically authoritative as Max Ernst's collage novel "Une Semaine de Bonte." It makes you think of Joseph Cornell's memory boxes, Robert Rauschenberg's time-stuffed assemblages, Anger, Hitchcock. It makes you feel that the art, as opposed to the business, of cinema does have a future - even if it has to be found deep in the past."—Jonathan Jones, The Guardian
Select Accolades
This five-disc set comprises 16 works by filmmaker and multimedia artist Bill Morrison.
Bill Morrison | 2014 | 455 minutes | Color | English
Special edition Blu-ray including both DECASIA, a legendary cinematic exploration of the beauty of decaying archival footage by experimental film artist Bill Morrison, and LIGHT IS CALLING.
Bill Morrison | 2012 | 67 minutes | Color | English
Artist Bill Morrison and musician Bill Frisell evoke the Mississippi River Flood of 1927 and ensuing transformation of American society.
Bill Morrison | 2013 | 80 minutes | Color | English
The ill-fated coal mining communities in North East England are the subject of this inspired documentary by multi-media artist Bill Morrison. Music by Johann Johannsson.
Bill Morrison | 2012 | 52 minutes | Color
