Have you finished binging the latest season of Black Mirror? The return of Netflix's wildly popular sci-fi anthology series has left us hungry for more visionary tales of technological dystopia. In this program, we look back at our favorite examples of future shock cinema: heady films that explore the ways technology is reshaping society and human subjectivity.The second evening in our program takes a look at Rainer Werner Fassbinder's mindbending 1973 TV miniseries World on a Wire. 

In the near future, cybernetics engineer Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) oversees a sophisticated computer simulation inhabited by over 9,000 "people" who do not realize that they are living in a virtual world. When Stiller discovers irregularities in the simulation, he launches an investigation, uncovering a conspiracy that leads him to question his own tenuous grasp on reality. Originally made for German television, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's audacious science fiction epic is a visually-striking mindbender and a prophetic precursor to The Matrix, among other cinematic explorations of virtual reality. Approaching this speculative material with his trademark irony and working across a broad canvass, Fassbinder conjures a singular, cerebral and distinctly kitsch vision of the future. Watch the trailer. 

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973, West Germany, 205 minutes. In German with English subtitles.

There will be a 10 minute break between parts 1 and 2. 

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