Film Screening
World on a Wire

Architecture through the Lens Film Festival

Fri, 15.02.2019
6:30 PM Auckland, Academy Cinemas

World on a Wire

Germany, 1973, 213 mins
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rating: M - Violence & nudity

'World on a Wire is Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s exploration of a computer-generated world. Originally premiering on German television as a mini-series, the film was an adaption of Daniel F. Galouye’s 1964 science fiction novel “Simulacron-3”. The premise involves a corporation that develops a computer capable of simulating an alternate dimension and transferring human consciousness into this new virtual reality.
 
A cybernetics engineer Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) unexpectedly inherits the job of Professor Wollmer (Adrian Hoven) following the man’s untimely death. When Stiller begins to uncover the truth about both Simulacron, IKZ (Institute for Cybernetics and Futurology) and the deat2h of Wollmer, he is faced with the revelation of a widespread conspiracy.
 
While World on a Wire is Fassbinder’s only work of science fiction, it brings back his recurring interest in 1970’s European opulence through its critique of excesses of power. Fassbinder creatively portrays a visionary, yet sinister future reality, reimagining modernism in the film’s innovative corporate and residential architecture.