Das Filmfest, Prague’s festival of German-language films, will be returning to the Czech capital next week for its 12th year running, and one of the most famous German movies ever made will be presented to open the festival on Thursday, October 19.
Fritz Lang’s silent sci-fi classic Metropolis, a futuristic epic often cited as one of the best films ever made, will be screened at Prague’s Municipal Library along with live musical accompaniment from the local band FORMA.
A day earlier, on October 18, Metropolis will be screened with FORMA’s live accompaniment in Brno at Kino Art.
While Metropolis originally premiered in Berlin at a length of about 2.5 hours in 1927, for the next 80 years only shorter versions of the movie existed and the full-length version was considered lost.
Italian music producer Giorgio Moroder brought attention to the film with a successful 1984 version that ran 83 minutes.
In 2007, however, archivists uncovered a 16mm copy of the original version of the film in Buenos Aires; it was restored and combined with other prints to make the closest version of Lang’s original cut possible, though two scenes were damaged beyond repair.
This version, released theatrically and on home media as The Complete Metropolis in 2010, will be screened in Prague and Brno next week.
Tickets to the event run for 200 CZK; note that while the film is without dialogue, intertitles are likely to be in Czech or in German with Czech subtitles.
In Prague, Das FilmFest will run from Wednesday, October 18, to Sunday, October 22 at cinemas Kino Atlas and Kino Lucerna.
More info can be found at the Das Filmfest official site and Facebook page.
