Death and decomposition are virtually the only certainties in life. Everything that is right now will eventually not be—decaying and becoming something else, in its tiniest, most microscopic form.
In the same vein, critically acclaimed director Bill Morrison used decaying nitrate film to transmit this message of decay.
Morrison was at the ByTowne Cinema during the March 26 screening of Decasia, and engaged the audience with a Q&A at the end of the film.
In the award-winning 2002 film, Morrison used found footage on deteriorated nitrate film. This method causes peculiar distortions, creating hypnotic, captivating images.
Decasia is the first foreign film to be shown as part of the Canadian Cult Revue film series at the ByTowne Cinema.
The original soundtrack by composer Michael Gordon, with similar hypnotic qualities as the footage, created the tone and set the pace for the movie. The final result is a psychedelic, and almost downright frightening atmosphere.
Although seemingly disconnected, the different images conveyed a universal theme: we are all decaying. The defective film connects the images in the same way that decay connects all of us.
Morrison chose footage that showed people trying to “defeat” physical rotting by engaging in activities such as dancing, exercising, flirting and praying — activities that in Morrison’s opinion, are an attempt to fight the inexorable truth of human decay.
“I was looking for imagery of people trying to rise above their station in life . . . people in love or involved in spiritual exercises,” Morrison said.
And there is no way to fight it. As Morrison puts it, “you can try, but our bodies are rotting.”
But not everything is bad news, and Decasia is certainly not a depressing film, according to Morrison.
“I don’t see it as a total bummer though,” Morrison said, as he continued to explain what the silver lining of the movie was.
These films have been re-discovered and reassembled, which Morrison said is also what happens to our ideas — they don’t necessarily die with us, but continue to thrive.
“The spirit lives on, even the people on the film found a way to make something beautiful,” he said.
Paradoxically, the decayed images combine to become something else entirely — the decay somehow creates.
“We all transcend,” he said. Despite the fact that the actors in the footage have all probably died, they still find a way to exist, Morrison said.
“In a way this film becomes a metaphor for human history, for our own ability to carry through generation to generation,” he said.
