Fritz Lang's Metropolis w/ live electronica by BomberGirl

Sunday, August 17
Admission: $9, $10 minimum
Showtimes: 8pm
reservations are recommended

Metropolis is a science fiction film created by the Austrian-German director Fritz Lang. It was produced in Germany and released in 1927 during a stable period of the Weimar Republic. It was the most expensive silent film of the time, costing approximately 7 million Reichsmark to make (equivalent to around $200 million USD in 2005). The screenplay was written in 1924 by Lang and his then wife, Thea von Harbou, and novelized by von Harbou in 1926. It is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis erupting between workers and owners under capitalism.

Metropolis is set in the year 2026 in a world of Gothic skyscrapers and subterranean factories. Luxurious playgrounds of the privileged class contrast with the harsh, cavernous prisons of the working proletariat. In creating a new soundtrack for the film, these futuristic and contrasting elements lend themselves readily to hybridized electronic and acoustic elements: Metropolis seems to have been waiting many years since its release for sound technology to meet its vision. Utilizing computers, processed voice, keyboards and electric violin, BomberGirl and the Mechanic's soundtrack encompasses and blends a broad range of styles as the film progresses, from industrial to ambient, experimental to classical, all of which lends a new perspective to this exceptional, ahead-of-its-time film.

http://www.myspace.com/bombergirlband
http://www.bombergirl.us