Cinema
Radio On
Christopher Petit · 1979
Synopsis
The camera moves through an apartment, room by room, for about five minutes, while a song shifts from English to German; in the bath, a man is dead. In London, Robert, a disc jockey, plays records on the internal radio of a biscuit factory, in front of workers who do not listen to him. He receives a package of three cassettes from his brother, then learns of his death, gets into an old Rover and takes the road to Bristol.
Context
Its author, who had come in 1978 to interview a German filmmaker he admired, told him about his project; the latter offered to look for money in Germany and became associate co-producer. The assistant cameraman and the sound engineer of his films did the image and the sound. Lisa Kreuzer, an actress in several of his films, plays a part in it, and Sting appears in it as a petrol pump attendant. The first shot is accompanied by a David Bowie song sung in English then in German. Its author reports having long put up with the label of the English Wenders, and that the man himself had spoken of the same roots and a different direction.
Who it is for
One hundred and four minutes, in black and white, in English and German, subtitled. The story follows a man's journey along the minor roads of the west.
Prizes and reception
Released in France in October 1980 and reissued in 2006; restored by the British Film Institute and screened at the New York Film Festival in 2021.
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