THX 1138 (Film)

George Lucas, creator of the STAR WARS empire, radically questions the American way of life in his directorial debut: “Buy—and be happy!” In a future society living underground, life is highly automated. People have numbers instead of names, and drugs regulate human behavior. Total surveillance is intended to prevent any deviation from the norm—such as refusing to take medication. Or having sex. Or even falling in love. THX 1138 meets LUH 3417—and she seems to have something resembling emotions. They begin to avoid the drugs. They begin to fall in love. They begin to become enemies of the state.

Inspired by Orwell and Huxley, Lucas creates cold, “technocratic” imagery whose unsettling effect is further heightened by the outstanding sound design.

Introduction: Nina Pfister

Director: George Lucas
Germany, 1971, 88 min. Director's Cut, English original version with German subtitles, FSK 12

Cinema: Cinema Quadrat, K1, 2, 68159 Mannheim

Admission:
€10 regular admission
€7 reduced admission
€6 Cinema Quadrat e.V. members

Tickets available online or at the box office.
cinema-quadrat.de/imagine-futures


Film Series: “Futures of Yesterday”

“Imagine Futures!” asks: What futures do we envision? At Cinema Quadrat, we look back at film history and show futures from yesterday: Rarely seen treasures of the science-fiction genre look ahead from the perspective of their time: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s ›World on a Wire‹ anticipates ›The Matrix‹ by decades with its nightmarish exploration of reality and simulation. ›Things to Come‹ depicts the next 100 years of human history, starting in 1936. George Lucas’s debut film ›THX 1138‹ tells the story of a dystopian, deindividualized world. And the animated film ›Fantastic Planet‹ is a hallucinatory trip into the alien universe.