It ate into every frame, creating the blotches we see now. Ahwesh reprocessed this cinematic debris. She didn't try to restore the original footage. Rather, she carefully gathered the traces of its decay. Sometimes we think that art makes things eternal.
Film is supposed to preserve appearances.
The actress grows old and dies, we like to say, but in the movies her youth endures forever. Ahwesh shows us otherwise. Film stock, no less than flesh, is mortal. Images are weak and vulnerable, just like bodies. The decomposition never ends.