Decoder

West Berlin, a future as bleak as our own. FM (iconic industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten’s own F.M. Einheit — also providing the film’s soundtrack) is onto something: what if the harmless muzak you hear at your local-globalized burger shop is in fact a corporate tool of control, designed to mellow out people’s revolutionary impulses? The solution, of course, is to be found by way of the tape deck: analogic sonic counter-terrorism! Meanwhile, Jaeger, a peep-show obsessed company man (portrayed by East Village avant-garde artist Bill Rice, who has appeared in the films of both Richard Kern and Jim Jarmusch), tasked with starring at snowy surveillance monitors all day, is assigned to putting an end the F.M.’s operation…

A film from a parallel, much more exciting cinematic reality than our current one, lovingly restored in 2K by the fine folks at Vinegar Syndrome, DECODER is an anarcho/proto-cyberpunk delirium, a not-so-subtle critique of corporate malaise and muzak culture, bridging the gap between William S. Burroughs’s writings (specifically The Electric Revolution, whose influence on industrial music is well documented), ALPHAVILLE-era Jean-Luc Godard (for the retro-futuristic noir atmosphere), and the decrepit cyberpunk visions of writers such as William Gibson and auteurs such as Shinya Tsukamoto and Sogo Ishii (who would direct Neubaten in his own HALBER MENSCH). Unfolding like something of a post-punk, Cold War-informed THEY LIVE by way of LIQUID SKY, DECODER will jack into your aural canals and help you see the truth about the cultural moment — a much needed jolt to your cinematic system, cinema at once transgressive, free, and unique, science fiction as-of-yet unsanitized by the hegemony of mass media. Co-starring — we kid you not — Burroughs himself, Genesis P-Orridge and a lounging, frog-obsessed Christiane F., with additional music by Soft Cell, Psychic TV and The The. Jack in, and don’t miss! – Ariel Esteban Cayer

Presented in a new 2K restoration of its original 16mm camera negative, created by Vinegar Syndrome