Film Studies Co-Sponsors Free Screening of Our Heavenly Bodies

Thursday, February 15 2018 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Our Heavenly Bodies, Thursday, February 15, 2018, 7 PM – 9 PM, UWM Union Cinema.

FREE FOR ALL ATTENDEES

This special screening of Our Heavenly Bodies (Hanns Walter Kornblum, 1925) features a live accompaniment by Nashville and Chicago electronic group Coupler and is free for all attendees. Our Heavenly Bodies is a little-seen German Kulturfilm from 1925 that sums up humanity’s understanding of astronomy and speculates about what might come next. This film was produced using 15 technicians and nine cameramen at a moment when Weimar Germany was particularly renowned for its marvelous special effects. Recently, Our Heavenly Bodies was reconstructed and digitally restored by Filmmuseum München, and ambient group Coupler was commissioned to write and perform a new score. Coupler, founded in Nashville by Lambchop veteran Ryan Norris, creates “…waves of ambient drones that slowly morph into a plundering groove reminiscent of krautrock pioneers Kraftwerk and Cluster…like an electronic flower unfolding…” (The Nashville Scene). This will be the first show in the upper Midwest; a Q&A period with Coupler will follow the screening/performance.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for 21st Century Studies, the Program in Film Studies, the Department of English, the Department of Art History, and UWM’s Year of the Humanities.