09.01.24, 20:30, Der Stand der Dinge (1982)

A German film crew is shooting a science fiction film in Portugal. Halfway through the shoot, the money tap closes and the producer is nowhere to be found. While the cast and crew wait for their wages, the director heads to Hollywood to find his backers. What follows is the sisyphean labour of a filmmaker lost in the economically paradoxical landscape of art cinema. Wandering between the dream of blockbuster excesses and a precarious reality, the director wanders the chilly streets of L.A. and its shadowy underbelly.

This road movie stuck in a traffic jam by Wim Wenders is an at times grim, then again comical look at the struggle for art and probably one of the Neue Welle cineast's lesser-known masterpieces. Like François Truffaut unpacked a decade earlier with his film-making fable La Nuit Américaine (1973), Wenders offers a playful meta-film about what happens when the cameras stop rolling. Unlike Truffaut, however, Wenders is less interested in cinephilic passion than in the capitalist perversions that dictate the flow of money.

This film will be introduced by KASKcinema programmer Lennart Soberon.