TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

Chemical Alterations, by Charles-André Coderre

The found footage film Decasia (2002) by Bill Morrison is a work of reassembly made up for the most part of pieces of nitrate film stock severely altered by time. Several sequences of the film show us spectacular chemical effects in which the decomposed elements of the film’s emulsion become the principal subject of the image. While this is a case in which the alteration of the image is natural, various filmmakers deliberately decompose the film emulsion, creating effects similar to what the passage of time can do.