Events

[SCREENING] If you enjoyed Liquid Sky, the last entry in the Kaleiodotropes film series at Squeaky Wheel, by all means make plans to see Decoder, a film from the same post punk/sci-fi vein. Made in West Germany in 1984 and rarely screened since its initial release, it is best remembered for a soundtrack that includes contributions from such early 1980s underground icons as Einstürzende Neubauten, SofCell. The The, Genesis, P-Orridge and Christiane F. Adapted from the work of William Burroughs (who also appears), the film stars Einsturzende Neubauten’s F.M. Einheit as a young musician who discovers that muzak played at his local hamburger joint is a government creation to control the population’s emotions. He also discovers that his own industrial sounds can produce just the opposite effect, something that brings him to the attention of an underground cult. Shot with heavily filtered colors to create a queasy urban dystopia, it’s a fascinating document of the pre-digital era and a time when information was considered power, before the internet turned it into another kind of noise. Decoder will be screened at Squeaky Wheel on Wednesday, April 15.