Having seen Lyrical Nitrate and been hypnotized by the beauty of it and of the artistry possible to be created out of found footage (even as it disintegrates), I bought DECASIA based on the reviews and in the hope that the same creative lightening would strike twice.
I was much disappointed.
The moments of "artistic" decay are few and far between. A previous reviewer pointed out (most poetically) the highlights of the film, but the majority of the film is endless -endless -endless clips of just poor quality footage.
To make matters worse, most of the clips, which went on far too long to hold interest, were actually slowed down to make them LONGER. Case in point is the whirling dervish footage, which not only is slowed down, but also repeated several times. Then there is the procession of camels which drag across the screen in slow motion to the point that I had to fast-forward just to get past them. Neither sequence, by the way, was particularly decayed or showed any damage of note; certainly nothing to merit slowing them down to such extents.
Likewise, a procession of schoolchildren through a convent garden is slowed to such an excruciating crawl that one actually misses the fact that this sequence IS damaged until you speed it up.
My other complaint (and an artistic mis-step on the part of the film-maker) is the fact that black-and white film stock was used instead of color. As Lyrical Nitrate demonstrated, part of the artistic value of decayed nitrate (even if it was a "black & white" film) is the palette of color produced by the chemical reaction of the film stock.
Lost are the yellows, oranges, rusts, browns and reds which might have lent some genuine visual interest to this otherwise rather bland collage.
I personally would not recommend this film and would instead direct interested parties to the vastly superior Lyrical Nitrate.
I was much disappointed.
The moments of "artistic" decay are few and far between. A previous reviewer pointed out (most poetically) the highlights of the film, but the majority of the film is endless -endless -endless clips of just poor quality footage.
To make matters worse, most of the clips, which went on far too long to hold interest, were actually slowed down to make them LONGER. Case in point is the whirling dervish footage, which not only is slowed down, but also repeated several times. Then there is the procession of camels which drag across the screen in slow motion to the point that I had to fast-forward just to get past them. Neither sequence, by the way, was particularly decayed or showed any damage of note; certainly nothing to merit slowing them down to such extents.
Likewise, a procession of schoolchildren through a convent garden is slowed to such an excruciating crawl that one actually misses the fact that this sequence IS damaged until you speed it up.
My other complaint (and an artistic mis-step on the part of the film-maker) is the fact that black-and white film stock was used instead of color. As Lyrical Nitrate demonstrated, part of the artistic value of decayed nitrate (even if it was a "black & white" film) is the palette of color produced by the chemical reaction of the film stock.
Lost are the yellows, oranges, rusts, browns and reds which might have lent some genuine visual interest to this otherwise rather bland collage.
I personally would not recommend this film and would instead direct interested parties to the vastly superior Lyrical Nitrate.