Event

World on a Wire

Seattle Premiere!
Restored Print!

(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973, Germany, 35mm, 205 min)
How can you know the difference between virtual reality and actual reality? Based on Daniel Galouye's 1964 science fiction novel Simulacron-3 and originally shot as a two-part TV miniseries, World on a Wire is Rainer Werner Fassbinder's exploration of what it means to exist, and what happens if you begin to suspect that you don't. At the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Science, 10,000 identity units live a simulated existence, but only one of them, called Einstein, knows it. When the real world starts to resemble the simulated world in uncanny ways, Institute Director Dr. Schiller contacts Einstein and develops unsettling suspicions about the nature of his own reality. Part 2001, part Alphaville, part Philip K. Dick, World on a Wire is all Fassbinderand a don't-miss event.

"There are movies that make news and movies that are news. World on a Wire is one of the latter." J. Hoberman, The Village Voice