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::PARALLEL EVENTS
METROPOLIS: FRITZ LANG'S PROPHETIC EXPRESSIONISTIC MASTERPIECE "UNCUT AND REVISED":
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CONCERT HALL OF THESSALONIKI
Friday 16.11, 21:00
Fritz Lang's classical, prophetic masterpiece "Metropolis" is an inspired encounter between the cinematographic image and musical creation. The most popular film of German silent cinema is presented for the first time in Greece in its most complete, almost original version, with a simultaneous performance of composer Bernd Schultheis' new incidental music.
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After its first presentation in 1927, the film was substantially cut, due to ideological reasons as well as commercial intentions. During the next decades, while the film was shown in Europe and America in its "cut" version, the reconstitution of the original version became the subject of constant research. The most accurate and most complete, until now, reproduction of the original copy of the film, rendered by Enno Patalas and the Film Museum of Munich as well as with the collaboration of many Film Archives and Film Libraries around the world, had its worldwide opening session in this year's Berlinale.
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"Metropolis" will be presented on Friday, 16th November 2001, at 21.00, at the Concert Hall of Thessaloniki, in the framework of the 42nd International Film Festival of Thessaloniki. It is the result of the collaboration between the Concert Hall and the International Film Festival of Thessaloniki, realized with the support of the Goethe Inter Nationes Institutes of Athens and Thessaloniki.
Bernd Schultheis' musical composition is performed by Sofia's Radio Orchestra, and directed by Nikos Athineou.
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Metropolis |
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Direction: Fritz Lang
Scenario: Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou
Stage direction: Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, Karl Vollbrecht
Cast: Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustave Frolhich,
750 actors, 30.000 walk-on parts.
Germany, 1926, Duration: 146'
The story of Fritz Lang's expressionistic masterpiece takes place in a futuristic metropolis, where the workers -unwilling pawns of an inhuman work mechanism- live in the bowels of earth, marionettes of an authoritarian Master, who controls everything from above, from the penthouses of the city he lives in. When a girl from the populace incites the workers to revolt against the Master, he manufactures a robot, a kind of replica (an effigy) of the girl, in order to confront the rebellion. However, the replica itself revolts against its creator and then only the love between the Master's son and the girl can save the city from total destruction. Metropolis is one of those films that, through their prophetic force, captivate the historic future in their images: the automation of work, the degradation of the individual into a simple part of the machine, the loss of human individuality into controllable blind masses (a fact that would be tragically confirmed in Germany only 10 years after), the totalitarian economical and political structures of the society, are described with accuracy and lucidity in that nightmarish city of a gloomy future.
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