Experience the Metropolis Biennale opening with the ultimate cult film that provided endless discussions and became implemented on the world political arena. Fritz Lang’s black/white Metropolis film will be shown in city parameters on the outer wall of a massive storage tower in Copenhagen harbour – a building that is going to be demolished in due course.
“Metropolis will have no equal”, said the master of movies, Luis Bunuel, after the premiere in 1927. The ground-breaking French avant-rock band Art Zoyd accompanies the film with their minimalist installations and compositions created specific for this film.
Fritz Lang’s masterpiece experienced on a massive screen accompanied by live music is a unique cocktail you won’t forget.
“(Art Zoyd’s) attention to detail is so impressive that their soundtrack effectively works as a kind of abstract shadow narrative (…) Metropolis is an impressive undertaking.” Tom Ridge, The Wire
“Personally, I feel Art Zoyd is one of the most important bands in the world - unsafe and arousing” Glenn Hammett, The Absolute Sound
ABOUT LANG’S METROPOLIS
It is the twentieth century. Metropolis is a gigantic town, made with great skyscrapers at the top of which the masters live in luxurious flower gardens. In the dark depths of the city, countless sub-humans work and suffer silently, riveted to the machine which crushes them like the god Moloch.
A young lady, Maria, preaches resignation to the workers. Using her as a model, the mad professor Rotwang makes a female robot who ironically is to lead these slaves in revolt. Machines are destroyed and Metropolis's rigourous order is shaken. But Freder Fredersen, the son of the master of Metropolis, with the help of the real Maria, who he loves, intervenes and, in front of the cathedral where the people have gathered, succeeds in reconciling the arm (of labour) with the brain (of capitalism). Can the humanist ideal get the better of the class struggle?
A pinnacle of German cinema: such monsters as Caligari and Nosferatu fade in face of another nightmare, that of modern life. With a scenario inspired by Wells, Lang gives free rein to his architect’s imagination – his initial vocation – with his impressive sets and crowd scenes which he skillfully handles. Coupled with this is the strength of such sequences as the slow march of the slaves in the subterranean city.
Did Hitler, who admired the film, derive from it his concept of the concentration camp? The end of the film however remains ambiguous. In 1959, Lang declared: "The conclusion is false. I did not accept it any more back then when I made the film."
Read more about Fritz Lang's Metropolis here.