differently, Molussia
(autrement, La Molussie)
Screening on Film
$12 Special Event Tickets
France, 2012, 16mm, color, 81 min.
German with English subtitles.
Rey's playful approach to narrative and structure reaches a new level and complexity in his latest film, a truly radical adaptation of The Molussian Catacomb, Günther Anders' tale of an imaginary totalitarian kingdom written in the early 1930s, during and in clear reference to the Nazi rise to power. Drawn to this book that he had not read and that remains untranslated into French (or English), Rey instead asked his friend Peter Hoffman to select chapters to read as the film's narration. Taking its cue from the first word of its title, each screening of Rey's film will be different, with each of the order of its nine reels selected I Ching style and presented in random order. In this way subtexts and hidden rhythms are unlocked from within Anders' extended dialogue about State power – spoken by a teacher and student who are captive in a Kafkaesque prison. In lyrical counterpoint to the voiceover recitation are a series of topographical images of landscapes shaped by highways, mountains and largely indifferent architecture, everyday landscapes, all in the radius of Paris, that are given a new power in Rey's films as expressions of the invisible yet omnipresent State.