Maya Schweizer & Clemens Von Wedemeyer (DE)
Metropolis/Report from China

SYNOPSIS

Metropolis, Report from China is a documentary essay about a research for an adaptation of the legendary 1927 feature film Metropolis, resulting from the artists’ trip to China in 2004. Focus of their interest during their travel was to collect those impressions of China which could serve as a template and as a basis for interpretation for the remake. Von Wedemeyer and Schweizer’s film provides insight into growth of the Chinese mega-city, but also questions the implications of modernity, development and progress at all costs. The film creates a convergence of two myths – the modern totalitarianism depicted in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and modern China, whose staggering growth has become the subject of heated debate in the West. At the same time it is a potent metaphor on visions of the future, as well as the cultural and ideological entanglements that take place in the new global reality. Metropolis by Fritz Lang was produced by Ufa in 1927 and was based on a script written by Thea von Harbou. The original film footage is assumed to have been lost. The film was reconstructed by Enno Patalas, the Murnau Foundation and the Munich Film Museum. In 2001 it was the first film to be included in the UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.

ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHY

Clemens von Wedemeyer was born in Göttingen, Germany in 1974. He lives in Berlin, Germany.
Currently he is spending a one year residency at Villa Romana in Florence. His work has been shown in international museums and institutions such as Moma New York, Kunst-Werke Berlin and Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem. Among the institutions of his recent and upcoming exhibitions are PS1 in New York, Argos - Centre for Art & Media in Brussels and CGAC, Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago de Compostella, Spain.
Maya Schweizer was born in 1976 in Maisons-Alfort, France. Currently she lives in Berlin. After studying in Aix-en-Provence and Leipzig, she earned her master from the University of Arts in Berlin.
She has won various prizes and grants, among others the grant from the Karl-Hofer Gesellschaft, Berlin for 2008-2010 and the residency prize Villa Aurora from the Goethe Institut, Los Angeles.

FILMOGRAPHY (duo)

• Metropolis/Report from China, 2007, essay, video, 42'00"
• Rien du Tout (Nothing at all), 2006, 35mmm and Video, stereo, 30'00"