Shot on expired 16 mm material, Anders, Molussien by Nicolas Rey shows urbanized and industrialized landscapes, with a soundtrack of civilization noises (car noise, aircraft noise, dog noise) attached to the coarse-grained flickering. Excerpts from Günther Anders' novel “Die molussische Katakombe”, written in the 1930s and published posthumously, are read. It tells of prisoners in the dungeons of a fictitious fascist state who entertain themselves with stories about the outside world in the form of philosophical fables.
Nicolas Rey, born in 1968 and based in Paris, has been making films that combine photographic, documentary and experimental elements since 1993. The nine chapters that make up Anders, Molussien are shown in random order. In this way, visual motifs, acoustic signals and technical strategies of image creation and sound design are constantly reassembled. The result is also an illustration of Anders' cultural-critical concept of the “Promethean gradient” between the imperfection of man and the perfection of the machine: due to its structural superiority, the device, according to Anders, will develop from an object into the subject of history. Like Rey's camera, the circumstances begin to spin: its depopulated images are sometimes upside down, while the noise of the machine is intermingled with the twittering of birds and the babbling of rivers.
