World on a Wire Part 1. (1973/ Germany)
 
Directed By: Werner Fassbinder
 
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's only work of science fiction, World on a Wire (1973) is surely one of the most obscure items among the forty-odd titles that constitute his filmography. Originally a two-part miniseries broad­cast on West German television, it had been screened theatrically only a few times before its reemergence in 2010, following a digital restoration by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation. The story was adapted from the 1964 novel Simulacron-3, by American author Daniel F. Galouye, about a corpora­tion that manufactures a supercomputer used to generate thousands of "identity units," or humanlike constructs built from digital information, which are ren­dered with such complexity that they believe themselves and their artificial world to be real.
 
Today, Fassbinder's World on a Wire seems equally prescient, prefiguring themes in such classic sci fi films like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), Steven Lisberger's Tron (1982), David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983), and the Wachowskis' The Matrix (1999). 

NB. All film screenings are free and in the back room of Tilapia on a large screen with complimentary popcorn. The Sunday screenings begin 6 pm and the Wednesday screenings start at 8pm.