On the 27th of March 2025, the Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath experienced a defining example of the community experience when, in its second room, Metropolis [1927] began to play.

The screening was a collaboration between several sensory experiences- the film itself, the live score of artist Zyggurat, and the assortment of snacks provided by Blow Water Cafe. 

The event was orchestrated by the exhibitors, Screen B14 in the carefully curated environment of the Hare and Hounds. 

Collaboration can allow for the painting of a ton of new colours together, but it somehow always remains a grey area. Benefitting practically all art, it can destroy any semblance of artistic intention for better or worse, threatening to transform meaning into, the artist’s horror of horrors, interpretation. Can a text still hold onto its meaning when its authors lie across decades – even centuries? Is there any such thing as an original meaning, especially in such a collaborative process as filmmaking? Can even an audience member’s engagement, a stranger’s gasps, change what a film means to us?

I’ll refrain from any more of these questions, dare we threaten to enter some horrible abstract void we will never leave. However, I do find it necessary to consider such differing factors and their union in a night like this. After all, for a film that begins with the epigram:

Perhaps the clearest collaborative element of the night was Zyggurat’s live score: with the musical artist on display, we can most clearly see the distinction between the collaborators (those on screen, those in front), and the act of blending taking place between these points. It has become almost a ritual to rescore silent movies in particular, recommitting the ritual of their original screenings while documenting new attempts of musical interpretation (for an example, just look at the difference between Michael Nyman and The Cinematic Orchestra’s scores for Man With a Movie Camera, or – even more relevant – the horribly dated Midi soundtracks on DVDs for the Fritz Lang movies Spione and Dr Mabuse).

What live scores offer is to immortalise its source text: with the film ‘complete’, the musician of a live score must work to accompany the film. While practised and refined, the film remains as the unchanged focal point. However, this screening slightly differed. After the event, I spoke to team behind Screen B14, who emphasised that the choice of Metropolis was made, instead, with music in mind first. Thinking of the associations between artist Zyggurat and the style of brutalist architecture, Metropolis sparked an interest, as it emphasised the shared interest of “grand urban environments, and the hidden mechanical & human costs”. 

Zyggurat’s score was hugely interesting to me, not only for the beautiful dance of accompaniment we usually see in live scores, but for the significance of the act of performance being on display. With a lamp shining on the artist and his analog synth setup, we were witness to two performances of mechanistic struggle. Just as protagonist Freder Fredersen (great name) navigates his role under the motions of the machine, so too does Pete Grimshaw (also great name) adopt his role in harnessing the synth’s retro-futuristic sounds. Both machine operators had a certain control over their beasts but still found themselves under its obedience, needing to survive by assuming the rhythms of the modern world – or, of course, the film itself. 

As the film escalates, raging against the machine, channeling literal crashing waves of torment alongside its populus’ anger, the synth reminds us of the ever-present insistence of technology. Even when a beautifully rendered wave signals the natural conquest of this land, we can’t escape the fact it is rendered – produced by man in the service of a 100-year old story, and 98-year old film. I found myself taken away in the struggle to see the depths of this act of performance, fighting between its immersion into the narrative and its meaning beyond the film. 

Isolating Metropolis itself, however, doesn’t leave it independent.  

Perhaps the largest collaboration behind-the-scenes of Metropolis is that between its writer, Thea Von Harbou, and its director Fritz Lang. As a partnership – both professionally and romantically – the two created a hugely influential filmography. From the fantasy epic Die Nibelungen to the cheer-worthy spectacles of Dr Mabuse, the proto-blockbusters produced by the pair have been more-than influential on the ways we make films today. 

Their influence would, however, not remain prevalent in just film circles – instead, Die Nibelungen and Metropolis would be considered defining examples of the types of propaganda that Joseph Goebbels would express strong admiration for. In 1933, Goebbels would (allegedly) propose an offer to Lang, to become the head of the German film industry under the Nazi Party; it didn’t take more than three months for the (half-Jewish) director to cut his losses and leave Germany. Von Harbou, however, would not join him – instead remaining and helping to produce Nazi propaganda. 

This split between artistic creators can’t help but impact the way we see Metropolis, fracturing any semblance of a unified message into questions of its distinct meanings. Plenty of analyses have attempted to determine the links between the film’s style and the aesthetics of fascism. One defining scene for these interpretations (missing from the cut used by Screen B14) finds the ‘machine-mensch Maria’ dancing on a stage held up by black bodies – more vital as a decoration than as a human being. 

Initially struck by the absence of its full context, I found it necessary in my viewing to reflect on more than just this absence. In reading other accounts, I’ve resonated with author Angel Leonardo Peña’s adoption of Walter Benjamin to inform their experience:

“Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property”.
(The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1935)

The masses of Metropolis do fail in their act of revolution – guided into it by a literal false idol. The destruction of their living space seems to be a tragedy alone, with their children suffering the consequences. Their anger, though, work through to leader Joh Frederson, recognising (like we do, again) that:

Any further solutions are absent. The urge for revolution, the heart of change, is what is seen as vital. In being trimmed to its core message, the act of expression is given priority over particular solutions. While not fascistic itself, it’s easy to see how this message of unified angst was of interest to the Nazi Party’s interests, just as one of national change was utilised by Reform UK in Birmingham’s Utilita Arena the day after our screening. The conversation around Metropolis’ aesthetics and political interpretations must be just that – a conversation. But that discussion can’t avoid the looming presence of the Nazi Party underneath.

The underlying artistry at play on the 29th was a snack pack of East Asian treats, courtesy of Kings Heath’s Blow Water Cafe. Unlike a Ratatouille-esque dining experience where you indulge in the same thin slices of aubergine and tomato you see on screen, Blow Water’s treats were entirely separated from the film – an array of various flavours and textures, from perfectly seasoned crackers to milk crunches. 

There was something intensely lovely about the experience of these snacks – something more than their delightful flavour. The experience of tying these snacks to Metropolis saturated the black-and-white world, offering a tasting menu of sorts to accompany this ancient city. For me, there was no other way to view it than with the currency of being in Kings Heath, in Birmingham, in 2025: we couldn’t just fall into the rhythms of Metropolis’ city with the taste of coconut biscuits in our mouth. 

One unmistakable feature of collaboration is its difficulty. It feels, to me, like a constant miracle that so many individually faceted people can clash, and create so much art together. Metropolis places its workers, the “hands” of the city, as one populus, a hive mind keen to reverse their misfortunes through as one body. On this viewing, I found that revolutionary crowd to be devoid of that challenge of independence. Their very reason to fight – to resist their existence as just a colony of workers – felt hardly challenged on a filmic level.

Watching Metropolis within the company of such different artistic formats emphasised just how necessary that challenge of individuality is. As we continue to recognise and appreciate film’s history, the adoption of new approaches to old forms helps to create unique perspectives that adapt the simple process of film viewing. From it, we can align the past with the present, playing with our current contexts as lenses to history. Sure, a snack might not feel like a great lens – you can’t even look through most of them – but I can vouch for that feeling of relation, that clash of tones, as something distinct and slightly unforgettable.

Metropolis may have been the event, the reason I bought the ticket – but I came out with the least interest in what I’d seen on screen. Its status as one of the films of history felt practically moot in relation to how Kings Heath felt to me on my walk to the bus. After the event, I managed to make it to Pan-Pan, where Concrete Mag was having its first meet-up of writers. I saw good friends meet up for the first time, and felt even more in tune with the rhythms of Brumopolis.

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