Oh, the glories of email threads. After sending a friend a link to MoMA’s recent screening of World on a Wire, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s mindblowing Euro-70’s sci-fi epic (filmed by mono.kultur favorite Michael Ballhaus), he immediately responded with Plastic Bag, a short film by Ramin Bahrani. The story of a existentially-minded plastic bag trying to find its maker, Plastic Bag is narrated by another wonderfully eccentric German, Werner Herzog. At times reminiscent of Stephen Hawking, Herzog’s slightly off-kilter voice lends just the right weirdness to a film that might otherwise have fallen into trite, American Beauty territory. The film is featured on FUTURESTATES, a website devoted to exploring the question, “What will America become five, 25, or even 50 years from today?” It features 11 shorts that extrapolate out from today’s everyday realities, some hopeful, some decidely not.
