The Way Things Go / Der Lauf der Dinge
30 min / USA / Switzerland, 1987
a short documentary film by
Peter Fischli and David Weiss


Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss have collaborated on kinetic installations since 1979. All of their work to date, whether in photography, film, drawing, or sculpture, has demonstrated a deep interest in the mechanisms that animate the universe of objects.

Fischli and Weiss remove these things that surround us from their contexts in our daily lives, and then restructure their relationships to one another. The artists aim neither to glorify nor to alienate these common objects, but merely to create new references in which they might be considered.

THE WAY THINGS GO - without narration or interviews - simply records the self-destructing performance of Fischli's and Weiss' most ambitious construction: 100 feet of physical interactions, chemical reactions, and precisely crafted chaos worthy of Rube Goldberg or Alfred Hitchcock.

5/12/2006 Fahrenheit 451

MOVIENIGHT XV Tuesday 5/12/2006 screening of:

Fahrenheit 451 (UK, 1966)
a film by François Truffaut



Fahrenheit 451 is a 1966 film of a dystopian future, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury.
The central character, Guy Montag, is a firefighter who lives in a totalitarian and isolated society where books have been outlawed by a government fearing an independent-thinking public. It is the duty of firefighters to burn any books on sight or said collections that have been reported by informants. People in this society including Montag's wife are drugged into compliancy and get their information from wall-length television screens. After Montag falls in love with book-hoarding Clarisse, he begins to read confiscated books. It is through this relationship that he begins to question the government's motives behind book-burning. Montag is soon found out, and he must decide whether to return to his job or run away knowing full well the consequences that he could face if captured.

About the book:
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is a fiction novel by Ray Bradbury. The main themes in the book are the Individual Vs. Society, the Importance of Literature, Propaganda and Censorship, Techonology, Animal Imagery, Paradoxes, Religion and Knowledge Vs. Ignorance.