In essence, Thursday night's screening of Differently, Molussia at Third Man Records counts as a world premiere — as did last month's screening at Brooklyn's Millennium Film Workshop, and those around the globe that preceded it. That's because this one-of-a-kind feature by French avant-garde filmmaker Nicolas Rey consists of nine reels to be shown in random order. As Millennium pointed out, that means there are 362,880 ways to arrange the film — and the one at Third Man is statistically unlikely ever to be repeated.
Based, according to MUBI.com, on a 1930s novel by German philosopher Gunther Anders that Rey has never read, it juxtaposes passages of two men talking in German — prisoners of an imaginary totalitarian state — with grainy, gunmetal-colored 16mm landscape images. “The inescapable historical resonances within Anders’ imaginary tale of Molussia — to Nazi Germany, but to various other times including our own — all become equally present through Rey’s unusual presentation,” Scene contributor Michael Sicinski wrote in Cinema Scope.
The film screens one night only as part of James Cathcart's experimental-film series The Light and Sound Machine, sponsored by Third Man and The Belcourt. Tickets are $10.
