Fritz Lang’s Metropolis: Screening and Live Score With Metropolis Ensemble and Ricardo Romaneiro

Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra Metropolis Ensemble makes its National Sawdust debut with a special screening of iconic silent film Metropolis (1927), featuring a live original score by composer and electronic artist Ricardo Romaneiro.

The German expressionist science-fiction classic directed by Fritz Lang, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia in which wealthy industrialists and business magnates reign from high-rise towers, while underground-dwelling workers operate the great machines that power the city. The film is now viewed as an accusative warning about the “profound impact technological progress has…as a subjugating and corrupting” influence over human society (Lane Roth, Film Quarterly). Metropolis performs Romaneiro’s score in conjunction with an electro-acoustic jazz trio featuring saxophone prodigy Immanuel Wilkins, clarinetist Narek Arutyunian, and foley percussionist Keita Ogawa.

Romaneiro and sound designer Leo Leite use Meyer Sound’s Constellation and Spacemap audio systems, newly installed at National Sawdust, to immerse audience members in the exaggerated mise-en-scène of Metropolis, from futuristic cityscapes to an enormous Gothic cathedral, reproducing Lang’s pioneering visual innovations in sound.