Decasia

Summary

The film is a meditation on old, decaying silent films, featuring segments of earlier movies re-edited and integrated into a new narrative. Critic Glen Kenny described Decasia as an "abstract narrative about mortality in all of its manifestations."

It begins and ends with scenes of a dervish and is bookended with old footage showing how film is processed. Nothing was done to accelerate the decomposition of the actual film prints, some of which were copied from the University of South Carolina's Moving Image Research Collections.

The film's musical soundtrack features several detuned pianos and an orchestra playing out of phase with itself, adding to the fractured and decomposing nature of the film.

Two films that were incorporated into Decasia have been positively identified: J. Farrell MacDonald's The Last Egyptian (1914), written, produced, and based on the novel by L. Frank Baum; and William S. Hart's Truthful Tulliver (1916).

Legacy

In 2013, Decasia was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry. It was the first film from the 21st century to be selected. Decasia was included in the September 2014 box set release of Bill Morrison's collected works, from Icarus Films.