Bill Morrison’s Decasia concludes BAM/Triple Canopy series on holes
DECASIA (Bill Morrison, 2002)
BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, April 24, 9:15
Series runs April 18-24
www.bam.org
canopycanopycanopy.com
Experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison’s production company is called Hypnotic Pictures, and for good reason: The Chicago-born, New York–based auteur makes mesmerizing, visually arresting works using archival found footage and eclectic soundtracks that are a treat for the eyes and ears. Made in 2002, Decasia is about nothing less than the beginning and end of cinema. The sixty-seven-minute work features clips from early silent movies that are often barely visible in the background as the film nitrate disintegrates in the foreground, black-and-white psychedelic blips, blotches, and burns dominating the screen. The eyes at first do a dance between the two distinct parts, trying to follow the action of the original works as well as the abstract shapes caused by the filmstrip’s impending death, but eventually the two meld into a single unique narrative, enhanced by a haunting, compelling score by Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon, which begins as a minimalist soundtrack and builds slowly until it reaches a frantic conclusion. The onscreen destruction might seem random, but it is actually carefully choreographed by Morrison (The Miners’ Hymns, The Great Flood), who wrote, directed, produced, and edited the film.
The first twenty-first-century film to be added to the National Film Registry, Decasia is screening April 24 at BAM Rose Cinemas, concluding “Triple Canopy Presents: In the Hole,” the fifth collaboration between BAM and the magazine; running April 18–24, the series, guest-curated by Yasmina Price, focuses on “films about openings and absences.” Among the other works being screened are Andrew Davis’s Holes, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Georges Franju’s Eyes without a Face, and Raoul Peck’s Lumumba: The Death of a Prophet.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]