Unesco honours Metropolis
2001-11-04 19:38
Bonn - Austrian-American director Fritz Lang's 1926 silent masterpiece
Metropolis will be the first film introduced into the Memory of
the World register of the United Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), the agency said on Friday.
The Unesco commission said the award would be presented
on November 8 in Munich.
The ceremony will include a screening of the expressionist
drama, which has been set to new music by composer Aljoscha
Zimmermann and restored by the Friedrich Murnau Foundation, named
for the legendary German director of "Nosferatu".
Unesco started the Memory of the World project in 1992 with
the aim of protecting humanity's cultural heritage.
Metropolis, filmed at the Ufa studios outside Berlin, depicts
a futuristic slave society. It was considered an astounding
technical achievement for its time, featuring nightmarish
cityscapes of looming skyscrapers.
Soon after its premiere in 1927, the original copy of the film
disappeared.
After years of searching, the Friedrich Murnau Foundation
located missing original footage and restored it to the picture in
time for its screening at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival in
February. - AFP
- SAPA