The State of Things

A director (Patrick Bauchau) runs out of film stock while in Portugal making a postnuclear Roger Corman adaptation called The Survivors in Wim Wenders’s largely improvised 1982 filmmaking nightmare. But there’s more: a behind-the-scenes intrigue that might never be resolved. In 1980, Ruiz was in Portugal making The Territory, an eccentric, garishly colored horror film about a group of stranded campers who revert to a mystical, cannibalistic lifestyle. With film stock running low, Wenders came to visit his then-girlfriend, one of Ruiz’s lead actors. From there, accounts differ. Some, including the filmmaker and critic Jon Jost, claim that Wenders hijacked the set to shoot his own meta-movie “inspired” by Ruiz’s troubled production; others, including Ruiz himself, deny that Wenders took undue advantage of the situation. This dispute only adds to the fascination of The State of Things—a vision of filmmaking as primal chaos and confusion. New restoration!