#worldonawire

[ferretfyre]

Got this beauty finally (feat. #eraserhead) #worldonawire @criterioncollection #film #filmposters #filmposter #rainerwernerfassbinder (at Americana Village) https://www.instagram.com/p/By_KXdphebM/?igshid=1tl848tgqxq3v

[jack-spacer]

I've seen the beginning of #worldonawire from @criterioncollection so many times that I'm almost tired of it. Every time I sit down and try to watch it, be it on Hulu or FilmStruck, I always get distracted for too long and by the time I want to watch it again, it's too late. Granted, it's a 3½ hour German science fiction movie and who has time for those? But then again, 3½ hour German science fiction movies are practically my bread and butter. So, as I type this, I am watching the movie on #bluray. In all of its grainy, 1970s splendor. (at Laredo, Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/BsoGy4XFgk1/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=15ni1s8cnmlx1

[anoblogue-blog]

Alex.Do: World On A Wire EP https://dystopian-music.bandcamp.com/album/alex-do-world-on-a-wire-ep http://www.dystopian.de/ https://www.facebook.com/AlexDo-146538155377780/ #alexdo #worldonawire #techno #anoblogue

[kaploded2]

#Repost @tiff_net with @repostapp ・・・ Today, the film world lost one of its most acclaimed cameramen, Michael Ballhaus. With over 100 credits to his name Ballhaus was best known for his 7 collaborations with Scorsese (GOODFELLAS, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST) and 13 collaborations with fellow German, Reiner Werner Fassbinder (THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN, WORLD ON A WIRE - pictured above). His innovative camerawork - known for immersing viewers into the emotional and psychological states of film subjects - will be remembered. #RIP . . . #michaelballhaus #cameraman #dp #cinematography #cinematographer #directorofphotography #fassbinder #scorsese #lasttemptationofchrist #goodfellas #worldonawire

[parrafo451]

Film 451: World on a Wire (1973)

Hands off the computer

By Zeke Trautenberg

What happens when the digital infiltrates an analog world? Can technology be a force for good? Who controls the seemingly innocuous ones and zeroes that make up the virtual realm? 

These twenty first century preoccupations are at the center of World on a Wire, Werner Rainer Fassbinder’s 1973 science fiction epic. Within the German director’s prolific and compressed career, World on a Wire occupies a special place as his sole foray into the genre of science fiction. The film’s exhibition history is also esoteric. The film originally aired as a two-part miniseries on West German television and remained virtually unseen until 2010, when the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation released a digitally restored version.

World on a Wire is based on the novel Simulacrom-3 by the Daniel F. Galouye and tells the story of Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) the technical director at IKZ, a state-funded cybernetics institute. Following the mysterious death of his predecessor, Stiller is tasked with overseeing the development of the institute’s Simulacron program, an electronic world in miniature populated by thousands of programmed identity units. This conscious, artificial universe is designed to replicate the development of society twenty-years into the future. These projections, which provide flawless data, make Simulacron invaluable to the state, but also attract the interest of corporations. When the institute’s chairman asks Stiller to manipulate the software to retrieve data on the demand for steel in the future for the United Steel company, Stiller is forced to choose between defending the public interest and surrendering to the demands of the private sector. Defying his boss, Stiller rejects the machinations of greed and power and vows to protect the transparency and public mission of the program.

The inhospitable setting of the World on a Wire reflects Stiller’s solitude as he fights for control of the machine and the world that he helped create. The film is set in a dystopian city of modernist concrete apartment blocks and sterile office buildings. The most striking thing about this anonymous city is its emptiness. It is a place populated by restaurants without customers and streets with no cars. The cinematographers Michael Ballhaus and Ulrich Prinz highlight this isolation during external sequences, using over-exposure to wash out the city into a uniform sea of grey. The film’s bold production design, manifest in its aqua blue and burnt orange tones, banks of computer screens, and glass walls, heightens the sense of unease and alludes to the constant threat of surveillance. Similairly, the jarring electronic vibrations of Gottfried Hüngsberg’s score amplify the atmosphere of paranoia that pulsates from the IKZ institute.

Mirroring the interaction between the two worlds, Fassbinder manipulates the reflective and transparent qualities of glass throughout the film. The intricate pans and travelling shots that incorporate glass and mirrors parallel the illusion of fluidity between these two worlds, but also emphasize their resemblance. These shots through and around mirrors and translucent walls dissolve the boundaries that separate these worlds, underscoring the common denominators of greed, fear, and power that shape them.

In addition to its use of sci-fi genre conventions and complex camera movements, World on a Wire incorporates elements of Hollywood melodrama. The histrionic qualities of the performances in the film both accentuate and subvert its moral themes of corruption and control. In Fassbinder’s future, femme fatales dressed in furs and evening gowns smile as they solicit unsmiling men in suits, replacing conversation with tired gestures. Like the vaudeville performances that bookend World on a Wire, the filmic world that Fassbinder creates is an imperfect, distorted copy of our own. The viewer is constantly reminded that what appears on the screen is not real, in the same way that Stiller’s collision with other worlds in his search for the truth only leads him to question his own authenticity.

The concept of moving between worlds and times is a common theme in twentieth century literature—Jorge Luis Borges explored the idea in many short stories—and is at the core of twentieth century science fiction films like Chris Marker’s La Jettée (1962), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), and the Wachowski siblings’ The Matrix (1999). In World on a Wire, the notion of a universe within a universe is, as in all science fiction, a means to meditate on the present. Cold War politics, surveillance, the relationship between corporations and the state, and the ethics behind the use of technology all feature prominently in Fassbinder’s film. Yet what resonates most profoundly for the twenty-first century viewer is the ease with which technology is exploited in this dystopian future. In World on a Wire, the gleaming computer screen’s promise of openness and inclusivity has been supplanted by baser instincts. 

In the age of cyber-warfare, cyber-surveillance, and the dark web, in which the internet is increasingly less free and where self-censorship is the norm, Fassbinder’s film is an eerily prescient representation of the moral quandaries posed by technology. Will this technology haunt us if we do not make it our own? Will we too become trapped in a virtual world of someone else’s design?

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Running Time:  212 minutes

Country: West Germany

[stillfolio]

World on a Wire 2/2 (1973) -  Rainer Werner Fassbinder 

[stillfolio]

World on a Wire 1/2 (1973) -  Rainer Werner Fassbinder 

[eatmomovies]

Artist Sam Smith explains on his blog the artistic process that got him to this design for the poster of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's long-lost sci-fi magnum opus. Though made in 1973 for German television, the entire 200+ minutes has been restored by Criterion and is being shown this weekend at the Bing Theatre at LACMA.