Preceded by: German newsreel, September 1939 (Ufa-Tonwoche #470). The first wartime edition of the Ufa-Tonwoche including "England provoking a second world war" and Danzig's "return to the Reich." (18 mins, B&W) (Wunschkonzert). The Third Reich fostered the modern era's first full-blown media culture, strategically instrumentalizing audio-visual fantasy ware, introducing radios into almost every household, developing television technology, staging political events as grand photo opportunities, replaying military conquests in the form of weekly newsreels. Request Concert, whose inspiration came from Goebbels, provides an idealized self-portrait of National Socialism's society of spectacle. It starts with Hitler's arrival at the 1936 Olympics and takes us on a tour of Reichshauptstadt Berlin. Its points of interest will include the battlefield of war, an affair of the heart, and above all a popular radio broadcast which binds private destinies to an imaginary collective fate. If anything, Request Concert grants a sneak preview of postmodern sensibility, a world in which the media dictate people's feelings, where everyday experience is above all a function of simulated stimuli and other-directed desires.-E.R.