Metropolis

With »Metropolis«, the film director Fritz Lang created a masterwork of german expressionist movies. Lang portrays the dystopia of a futuristic, fully technologized city of the future. While the rich live on the surface, the workers have been banished underground. When the son of the city’s governor first comes into contact with the labouring class, he decides to change things. He starts a revolt, and the metropolis drifts towards total destruction. Even today, »Metropolis« is compelling in its unique aesthetics, its impressive animation and futuristic images which made cinema history.

The film, first screened in 1927, was only available in an abridged version for many decades. Thanks to a copy found in Buenos Aires in 2008, it was possible to reconstruct a version that comes close to the original. As early as 1995, the Argentinian composer Martin Matalón wrote highly colourful film music for »Metropolis« for 16 instrumentalists and electronics, nowhere negating its proximity to jazz. He subsequently revised the composition several times. »Metropolis Rebooted«, newly composed for the two-and-a-half hour reconstructed version of the film, is the next logical step. Here Matalón explores the sonic possibilities of a large symphony orchestra with all its sections (and the possibilities of electronics as well), juxtaposing soloistic passages with compact ensemble sections and complementing the images with a soundscape all its own – sometimes closely following the rhythm of the images, sometimes adding atmospheric counterpoints.