Sundance Catalogue Notes Dir: Bill Morrison Section: Frontier An irreverent elegy to Walt Disney's animated musical FANTASIA, Bill Morrison's extraordinarily mesmerizing DECASIA is a stunningly beautiful if not dystopian ode to creation and decay. Set to an original symphonic score written by Bang On A Can co-founder, Michael Gordon and performed by the Swiss 55-piece basel sinfonietta, DECASIA is a formally rigorous and recursive work which both reflects and embodies the creative beauty of man's inevitably doomed struggle to transcend his own mortality. Contorting the form of traditional narrative structure beyond recognition, this hypnotic and ruminative film takes place in three simultaneous acts. Firstly, there is the photographic content ­ a tapestry of found footage including a child being born, women in a beauty salon, filmmakers at work, daredevils, and religious zealots - which shows creation, achievement, and man trying to master or defy the elements to reach a higher spiritual plane. Secondly, there is the enthralling dance and play of the patterns of decaying celluloid - bubbling strings of gaping holes, waves of warps smears, and showers of flecked ruination. The final act is how the primordial froth of disintegrating film mutates image fidelity to create entirely new scenarios. As the Sinfonietta moans and wails its jarring score, the artifacts of decay boil characters out of the frame, smear the surfaces of shiny new cars, and melt the skin off of its subjects. Morrison has crafted a penetrating reminder of the fragile and ephemeral nature of physicality even as he celebrates the act of creation. To give oneself over to the cacophonous rules and rhythms of DECASIA is to witness the ironic beauty death. -- Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival Back to main page