Fritz Lang's 1927 classic futuristic feature film "Metropolis" is the inaugural film for the Fall 2002 Film Festival, sponsored by Syracuse University's School of Information Studies. The film will be shown at 7 p.m., Sept. 12 in SU's Kittredge Auditorium in Huntington Beard Crouse Hall. A discussion will follow. The film festival is free and open to the public.
In addition to "Metropolis," other films scheduled for the series include "Bicentennial Man" (Sept. 26), "Brazil" (Oct. 10), "The Net" (Oct. 24), "Sneakers" (Nov. 7), and "Fahrenheit 451" (Nov. 21).
The goal of the festival is to stimulate thought and discussion about the role of information in society through the medium of film. Faculty members and doctoral students from the School of Information Studies will facilitate discussions immediately following the viewings.
Originally released in Germany, "Metropolis" is a visionary silent film that is set in the year 2026, where the towers of Metropolis reach up to the skies and are the home of a privileged elite who callously rule the entire city, according to Kino International. The architecture of the towers is in reality a spatial expression of a caste system which forces enslaved workers to maintain the city's vast underground machine complex. Lang's fable of class struggle, occultism and science was inspired by his first look at the Manhattan skyline on a visit in 1924.
